Thailand: 70 years of traditional brew

He takes an appraising sip and nods. Another cup of kafe boran, or traditional Thai-style coffee, is ready. Customers can drink it straight or syrupy-sweet with lashings of caramel and condensed milk.

Lee Sata, or “Pae” (“grandpa”) Lee, brews coffee the same way he’s done it for 72 years – and in the same cramped plywood shop where he began serving it in 1937.

Back then he was 14, and coffee was a novelty drink in Thailand. Today, Bangkok alone has 89 Starbucks. Yet thanks to its old-world charm, the elderly Chinese-Thai man’s brew is a popular curiosity.

Coffee lovers from Bangkok, including the rich and famous, flock to Pae Lee’s coffee shop with its six round tables ringed by wooden stools at Klong Suan Market, a century-old riverside bazaar in neighboring Chachoengsao Province.

Read more...