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Cafe Taro
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Named for a root vegetable

Cafe Taro opened on 214 Crown Street in 2021 with one espresso machine, a pot of steamed taro and a hunch that New Haven wanted a coffeehouse with a little color in it.

A long, light-filled café with communal wooden tables, a pastry counter and a dark tiled bar

Clara Hart spent ten years buying green coffee for roasters, mostly in Huila and Guji. On a buying trip she drank a taro latte in a Taipei café that tasted like nothing she had in America, and she came home thinking about it.

Cafe Taro is the result: a serious coffee bar, a bakery that leans into ube and taro, and a room that feels like an occasion even at 6:30 on a Tuesday. We make every syrup and paste in the house, and nothing on the menu is purple because of a dye.

Taro or ube?

The question we hear most at the counter. They are two different roots, and we cook with both.

Taro

Colocasia esculenta

A starchy corm with white flesh flecked in lilac. Steamed and mashed it turns a soft lavender and tastes nutty, a little like vanilla and toasted rice. It goes into the taro latte, the taro chai and the mochi buns.

Ube

Dioscorea alata

A purple yam from the Philippines, violet all the way through and sweeter, earthier, closer to a sweet potato. Cooked down into halaya, it is the color in our ube croissant, the pandesal and the ube coconut latte.

A day on Crown Street

  • 4 AMMarcus starts laminating downstairs: ube croissants first, then butter.
  • 6 AMThe day’s taro is peeled, steamed and mashed. Yuna dials in the espresso.
  • 6:30Doors open on Crown Street. The first tray of pandesal is already out.
  • 2 PMFriday to Sunday, the reserve bar starts pouring tasting flights.
A barista pouring water from a black gooseneck kettle into a pour-over dripper on a scale

Behind the bar

  • Clara Hart in a white apron, arms folded, beside the espresso grinder

    Clara Hart

    Founder

    Spent ten years buying green coffee in Colombia and Ethiopia, then came home to New Haven to pour it herself. Still works the reserve bar most Saturdays.

  • Marcus Dela Cruz in an apron, working dough on a floured steel bench

    Marcus Dela Cruz

    Head baker

    Grew up on his lola’s ube halaya in Daly City. In by four to laminate; the ube croissant was his audition piece, and it never left the case.

  • Yuna Seo smiling in a canvas apron, leaning in the doorway of the café

    Yuna Seo

    Head of coffee

    Dials in the espresso every morning, writes the reserve board, and perfected the taro latte over about four hundred test cups.

We’re usually hiring baristas who care about a good pour. Write to us or ask whoever is on the bar.

On Crown Street, a block off the Green

Address

214 Crown Street
New Haven, CT 06510
(203) 555-0174

Getting here

Ten minutes’ walk from Union Station. The Temple Street garage is two blocks west; meters on Crown are free after 8 PM.

Hours

Opening hours
Monday – Friday6:30 AM – 7 PM
Saturday7 AM – 7 PM
Sunday7:30 AM – 5 PM
  • Coffee, taro bar and bakery from open to close
  • Breakfast all day, lunch from 11 Monday – Saturday
  • Reserve tasting flights from 2 PM, Friday – Sunday
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In the Ninth Square, between Orange and State. Bike racks out front.
Order ahead for pickupCatering & the Taro Room

Photo credits

This is a concept site. Its photographs are stock and Creative Commons images standing in for the café’s own; Creative Commons photos are used under their licences, unchanged except for cropping.