Soloist Coffee Co.

Soloist began as a pop up during Beijing Design Week in 2014, set inside a former public bathhouse on Yangmeizhu Xiejie, a narrow lane in the Dashilar hutong district minutes from Qianmen. The shop stayed on after the festival ended, keeping the mismatched vintage furniture collected from decades spanning the 1920s through the 1980s, and its beans are roasted in house and checked by a licensed Q grader from the Coffee Quality Institute.

Coffee comes three ways here, steampunk style siphon, drip filter, and a tasting flight that moves through several origins in one sitting, alongside single origin espresso and a rotating list of unusual ice cream flavors like peach and plum. A rooftop terrace looks out over the hutong's grey tiled roofs, busiest right as the afternoon sun starts to drop.