L’infusion: A Hutong Café Bar With a Cozy Interior, Long Menu, and Cats

L’infusion, or Mu Ming 沐茗, is a café bar located near Yonghegong in the heart of Beijing. There are two locations not far from each other. One is in a hutong and the other in a courtyard, or siheyuan.

Walking down Wudaoying hutong, you are surrounded by visitors and find yourself walking past many cafés and bars of different styles. Some are minimalistic and modern, while others look clustered and homey with wooden furniture. Menu items are posted in windowpanes, and you can see from the street the soft fabrics of rows of clothing hanging on racks and the glitter of dainty jewelry spread across a counter inside a shop or two.

L’infusion has a small shop front, and you might just miss it if you aren’t looking carefully at the numbers on the buildings, counting up to number 53. A small off-white sign hangs lightly, coming out from the wall to greet you, with the word L’infusion written on it. Go up a few narrow steps and push open the light wooden door and you’re in.

The interior of the café features low, small, wooden furniture, with some wooden chairs covered with thin cushions on the seats. Dark, faded floral patterns in red and blue greet your eyes, and the navy curtains flow down over the windowpanes with their white floral swirls. Little lanterns hang in a row from an exposed wooden beam in the ceiling. The ceiling is pitched and you can count the wooden beams. On the ground floor there are a number of small, square, wooden tables surrounded by two to four seats or sofas. There’s also a small second floor with more daylight and a few more seats. The dark brown tiles beneath your feet blend in with all the wooden colors around you. A gray, striped cat strolls sleekly by (maybe stay away if you are allergic to felines).

The café is dimly lit. Bookshelves crowded with magazines stand by the tables and on one wall hangs a bamboo mat, wooden framed pictures of some landscapes, and a row of Polaroid photos hanging from a string by clips. Soothing instrumental music plays in the background and many of the customers seem to be locals chatting with one another. The noise level is low enough that it makes for a good work environment.

L’infusion has quite a long menu, neatly bound into a little book for you to flip through at your leisure. Pizzas, salads, and desserts are offered, as well as other main courses like chicken curry with rice (RMB 45), stewed mushroom with pork rice (RMB 45), and teriyaki chicken with rice (RMB 45) amongst other options.

A large range of drinks are available, from soft drinks to fresh juice to teas, hot chocolate, milk teas, iced milk teas, milkshakes, smoothies, white and red wines, whiskey, cocktails, spirits, beers, ice coffee, and of course regular coffees. To give a few interesting examples from the menu, there are hazelnut lattes (RMB 35 for a cup and RMB 38 for more in a mug), blue mountain coffee (RMB 58), Jamaican blue mountain coffee (RMB 128), iced 'very vanilla' coffee (RMB 40), iced papaya milk tea (RMB 38), and Japanese green milk tea (RMB 38). The beer list even has subsections organized by region or origin, and the tea list definitely offers enough to pick from, if not to give you selection anxiety.

The iced lavender milk tea (RMB 38) certainly has a strong flavor that lives up to its name. It also has a hint of the taste of milk tea, so you could say it’s exactly what it has promised to be. Although if you are someone who thinks lavender isn’t a thing to be eaten, then you might want to steer away from this one, because the milk tea’s flavor in no way covers the taste of lavender.

The sour plum juice (RMB 33) tastes very light, and is perhaps a little too bland to be called “sour,” so it may not be the best item to order at this café bar. The soy latte (RMB 38) was smooth and gentle tasting. It is also topped with warm foam that’s sweet but not too sweet. This is a great choice if you want to have a drink with limited caffeine content that tastes like coffee but not too much like it.

Altogether, L’infusion makes for a pleasant pit stop as you tour the hutongs of Beijing, and explore the cultural and historic relics of the Dongcheng District. It offers a very relaxing and casual setting, certainly quite a long menu, and an opportunity to play with a cat if you’re a cat person. A place with coffees and alcohol available by day and night, it’s also no less welcoming if you’re into neither with alternatives like teas, smoothies, milkshakes, hot chocolates, and fruit juices.

L’infusion
Hutong address: 

Daily 11am-11pm (thought it might stay open until midnight if plenty of customers are present). 53 Wudaoying Hutong, Yonghegong Street, Dongcheng District (6407 6526 ) 

东城区 雍和宫大街五道营胡同53号

Courtyard address: 

Daily 11am-11pm (though this location sometimes closes early if there aren’t many customers). 60 Andingmen Street, Dongcheng District (6406 3566) 

东城区 安定门东大街60号

Photos: Kyle Mullin