Cafe Central: A tiny cafe started by former Honolulu Coffee Co. partners

Cafe Central is a little sliver of a cafe in the First Hawaiian Bank building. It used to be a broom closet; now it offers pour-over coffees and coffee brewed via siphon. (For the geeks, that's a Bonmac halogen three-unit siphon bar—probably the only one on the island; in training, Cafe Central consulted famed Blue Bottle Coffee in San Francisco. For the aesthetes, ordering a cup is like watching your coffee being brewed in a stylish, antique chemistry lab.)

Max and Mary Suiter transformed the former broom closet into its current Frank Lloyd Wright-inspired space. Max and his brother started Honolulu Coffee Company, hence the attention to detail in the coffee. But Cafe Central is more than coffee: pastries come primarily from Fendu Boulangerie, supplemented with blueberry donuts from St. Germain Bakery, banana bread from Cakeworks and oatcakes from Akamai Foods. Cafe Central also scoops Il Gelato gelato; an affogato (gelato with a shot of espresso) is a popular request here. The food menu is very limited, with only three sandwiches, but the chicken club sandwich, on a Fendu roll that holds up to a generous, chunky filling, is perfect. Even the acai bowl here is spot on.

Cafe Central has become my go-to spot for a downtown break; mostly because of the sweets and coffee, but also because it feels like a little design oasis. Max, a general contractor, treated this tiny cafe as his own pet project: He commissioned stained glass from a North Shore artist and installed all the wood panelling with wood from a fallen red eucalyptus tree that he had been saving for 12 years.

"We weren't looking to getting back in [the coffee business]," Mary says—the couple had sold their share in Honolulu Coffee Co. long ago. "But when this opportunity came up, one little place, we thought it'd be great."