There’s a quiet revolution brewing on the narrow streets of Taiwan's capital, Taipei. In a country where tea is practically a national treasure, another beverage is surprisingly, and slowly, taking over. That concoction is coffee, and virtually everywhere now there's a stand dedicated to the cult of caffeine.

Coffee shops in Taipei are dizzyingly numerous. Though they've been around for decades now, the city's coffee community only recently began to bloom with the introduction of barista competitions. It's a tight-knit group.

Van Lin, an esteemed barista and the owner of Taipei's Gabee Coffee, an award-winning cafe in the Songshan District, says that the number of coffee shops are most definitely up to the thousands: "Roasters alone add up to at least 3,000." And in Taipei, the design of a coffee shop is as paramount to the shop’s identity as it’s beans—sometimes even more so.