Espresso Lab DVO

I tried to enjoy it, but it just never felt “right.” Not knowing what to do next, I decided to study abroad in China in search of inspiration. I felt like studying Chinese culture was a good start…

During exam periods, I would often go café hopping. Up to this point, coffee was just an activity to do while studying. But then I found my first love, “Hambella.” Hambella was a single origin, lightl

y roasted coffee, and was served by a barista who taught me not how to simply drink coffee, but to appreciate it in all its complexities, to really drink coffee. While preparing the coffee, the barista told me a story, the story of the coffee and how it came to be. How it was harvested, processed, roasted, and then finally, how it was prepared. It was an eye-opening experience, like reading about music, and then hearing it for the first time. It was astonishing really, how the coffee tasted… it was fruity, floral, and to be honest, nothing at all like “coffee”. No more Chinese culture for me, I want to learn more about coffee culture. After graduating, I travelled around China to study coffee further, picking up a SCA diploma along the way and training under Sun Lei, the 2019 CBC Champ himself. As much as I wanted to stay in China, home was calling. I had to go back. I was going to go back to Davao City to open my own café, but I felt like I needed more than just coffee to make my café a success. I needed pastries. Fine, I’ll go to baking school, but what kind of pastries do I want to serve with my coffee? I grew up in a very health-conscious family, so I turned to Japanese pastries, since they tend to focus on making their food light-tasting, fresh, and healthy. And so, I trained under a Japanese mentor from UN GRAIN, a famous pastry shop in Tokyo. After experiencing the life in one of the mega-cities in China, where everything was about competition and numbers, I decided to open a café where I could serve people the way I think they should be served, to recreate the experience that Hambella gave me. It might be hard to get customers to engage with coffee at first, but I won’t know until I try. And before I knew it, along with generous help from my family, Espresso Lab was born.