COFFEE CAMP — Restaurant in Hakone

We stopped by for a coffee and desserts to pass the time waiting for the next leg of our trip.

The staff were polite and most of them could speak good english.

We had a pour over, latte, and crema catalana.

Overall, their pour over was fantastic. It seems that they roast their beans in house as there was a roaster on the second floor. I had the yunnan fermented process beans, and it was fantastic. Very nice fruity flavour with a sweet finish and nice kiwi-like acidity.

Their latte was good too, a bit strong for my liking, but it had good notes of cacao and nuttiness to it, with low acidity, but a little bit of astringency.

Finally, I believe that their crema catalana was one of my favourites. Very similar to a creme brulee, but they used a frozen custard/ice cream as the base. Well caramelized/burnt sugar layer, and it seems that they used actual vanilla beans for the custard as we could see the black dots of vanilla. It had a pleasant vanilla fragrance emanating from the custard. Amazing dessert.

Overall a nice place and great coffee/dessert. Not sure about their...

I visited COFFEE CAMP twice. The first time I visited there wasn't any seating available, so I ordered to-go and had hoped a seat might open up. One staff member tried to secure me a seat and was very kind to me during my entire visit. Unfortunately, there was some miscommunication with the manager and I was unable to get a seat during the time I was there. The staff members were kind though -- so I wanted to go back and give it another try the next morning. I'm glad I went back, as I got a seat this time. The coffee was wonderful and the breakfast set I had was good too. I also tried the tiramisu which was very good. The staff are very kind and they do also speak English. The cafe is cute overall but seating is limited due to a poorly designed layout. I'd recommend COFFEE CAMP because of its unique menu and incredibly kind staff, but it does have some serious kinks that keep it from receiving 5 stars...

This is a very cute good vibes cafe but the efficiency is extremely low. We waited about 15mins to get a table, but another 40mins to receive our food. It was a Sunday, and its quite busy. However the dishes on the menu are very straight forward and doesn't excuse the long wait. There's a full fleet of staff, no shortage of people. My party and I sat at the bar seats and we were able to observe inefficiencies in the kitchen. An example would be hand breaking and placing individual pieces of walnuts on a sandwich. All this could be avoided with better prep. One of our our dishes was forgotten as well, to which the staff apologized.

My advice is to find another place of you see a line at the front because there's a lot more waiting once you get in - just for coffee...