Espresso Mafia

Chris­t­ian and Amber are a Cana­dian cou­ple who moved to Girona 10 years ago. Chris­t­ian was a pro­fes­sional cy­clist, and while trav­el­ling around the world, he dis­cov­ered his love for cof­fee. Soon after they de­cided to open a café in Girona: La Fab­rica, now a pop­u­lar place in the city and well-known for of­fer­ing qual­ity and unique ex­pe­ri­ences. Peo­ple from Aus­tralia and North Amer­ica, in par­tic­u­lar, are de­lighted to find cof­fee like in their own coun­tries. They had so many peo­ple every day that they de­cided to ex­pand and so they opened Espresso Mafia, the only place in Girona that roasts fresh cof­fee. They have also ex­panded in­ter­na­tion­ally and ex­port their roasted cof­fee to Jakarta, Port­land and Vi­enna. Chris­t­ian shares the ob­jects that are im­por­tant in his busi­ness with us.

1. Cof­fee. We use freshly roasted cof­fee, we source the bean green and roast them in house. Our va­ri­eties come from Kenya, Nicaragua, Guatemala...We use 18 grammes for each cof­fee, com­pared with other bars, which use seven grammes. It’s the same amount of caf­feine but al­lows the flavours of the cof­fee to come out more. Our cof­fee is fair trade, di­rect trade and or­ganic, we track the cof­fee and work di­rectly with farm­ers.

2. Milk. Fresh milk de­liv­ered to us every morn­ing from the Mas Colomer farm in Esponellà, who we have worked with since day one. We only use full fat milk, 3.5%.

3. Milk jug. With­out a han­dle, to do latte art as I like. Each barista has his or her own style, and we like play­ing with dif­fer­ent de­signs.

4. Cof­fee Grounds book. All I know about cof­fee is due to read­ing and prac­tic­ing. We pro­vide Espresso Mafia with a range of books so that the peo­ple com­ing can read and learn and ex­pand their knowl­edge on cof­fee.

5. Cup. Our sig­na­ture, in­spired by the an­cient Japan­ese tra­di­tion of tea, it is han­dle­less too, to enjoy cof­fee bet­ter while wrap­ping one’s hands around the hot cup. It’s made and printed with our logo lo­cally in La Bis­bal.

6. Cof­fee sam­ples. For cof­fee cup­ping, we try many dif­fer­ent sam­ples of cof­fee from farm­ers all over the world to choose the ones we roast for you. These are from Brazil, Ethiopia and Peru.

7. Tast­ing spoon. Spe­cial cup­ping spoon used to try dif­fer­ent cof­fees. It’s like a soup spoon, when you sip it you get all the flavour of the cof­fee.

8. Aero­press Tro­phy. A tro­phy we won in the Spain Aero­press cham­pi­onship two years ago.

9. Cava. A gift from our friends when we opened Espresso Mafia, a gold cava like every­thing in Espresso Mafia. Our style is gold, white and wood, in­spired by Japan, min­i­mal­ist and re­lax­ing, just fo­cused on cof­fee.

10. Siphon: A pre­sent from my wife from Por­tu­gal. It’s a fil­ter heated by a flame which in­fuses the cof­fee and you don’t need elec­tric­ity, it makes it on the spot. I like to use it as it’s a way of going back to tra­di­tion.