International Coffee Day: Abu Dhabi’s baristas share the stories, craft and culture behind your daily coffee

Abu Dhabi: We love coffee. We post it, rank it, queue for it and plan our mornings around it. But between the bean and the first sip stands a person, someone who chose coffee, chased it across borders, and still lights up when you take that first sip.

On this International Coffee Day, Gulf News spoke to four baristas across Abu Dhabi about how they got here, what they love about the job, and what they wish we understood.

The tea drinker who fell for coffee

Judah Vibar, 29, used to be a tea person. Then he discovered you could make coffee like tea, and that was the end of that.

"I found that you can make coffee like tea and that changed everything for me," he said, talking about the V60, the slow pour-over method that hooked him.

Coffee was always part of life at home in the Philippines where he was born and raised. His family does not drink alcohol, so after every party the plan was the same: brew a pot at home or find a café nearby. And when coffee turned trendy during the Corona pandemic, he was ready to give take it to the next stage.

He started out training as a barista in his cousin's and sister's coffee shop in Calamba, Laguna, but soon wanted more than what his province could offer. Specialty methods were expensive and hard to sell to locals, so he moved to the city, worked in a specialty café for almost two years and built connections in the coffee community. One day his sister paved a way for him that he could not ignore.

"She lives in the UAE, and told me that here, the coffee is on another level," Judah said. "Really futuristic."

This is why he decided to come to Abu Dhabi five months ago and works now on a daily in his cafe Twenty Three Five Specialty Coffee in Khalidiya, which calls itself a "modern specialty" café with curated drinks rather than just espresso. With him he has brought a piece of home: the Turon latte, inspired by the Filipino dessert.

"If they want something sweet, they just ask for a Spanish latte," he said. "It's too overrated for me. I want to introduce something different, an experience from my culture."

What he loves most has not changed since his first job.

"When the customer takes their first sip, that's priceless," he said, "It means a lot when I see their reaction, that they're satisfied."

Off the clock, Judah crochets his own hats and sings.

The Side Hustle That Took Over

26-year-old Muhammad Musamil Khan never set out to be a barista. He was an accounting student picking up café shifts to pay his tuition and help his family, and coffee was simply the job that fit around his lectures in Pakistan. When a friend introduced him to specialty coffee, in a country that barely had any, the numbers stopped mattering as much as the extraction.

"First, it was just a job," he said.

What kept him was the science, the technique and the people he met. Back then, there were nobody in Pakistan to teach specialty coffee properly, so he followed the industry to the UAE, arriving around 2018, because he heard this is the right place for it. He worked in Ras Al Khaimah, then four years in Al Ain, then Dubai, and now Abu Dhabi's LMTD in Marsa Al Bateen.

He is encouraged by how many Emiratis are now opening cafés and roasteries. His own boss started small from home and now runs four branches.

If you ask him what his favorite drink to make is, he will say V60.

"It helps your technique. I like to balance my coffee, adjust it every time, taste it." The best part of the job? "You can drink as much coffee as you like."

He'd like to correct one misconception: that there's only one right way to do it.

"Everybody has a different technique. What works for one person won't be 100% right for another."

Muhammad likes to spend his time at the gym, when he is not working with coffee.

The craftsman who came to learn

Mustafa Khalifa is 36 years old and from Egypt and works at H's Coffee & Bakery in Abu Dhabi. He had always dreamed of traveling. Coffee was what gave him a reason to.

Before the UAE, he worked with coffee in Egypt, though not the kind he makes now. Here, he said, coffee is a necessity, and that is exactly what he came looking for five years ago. He sees it as a craft you can only master through training, and the UAE is the place to do it. He has worked with coffee ever since, and it was at his current café that he learned the techniques, including the different shapes and pictures you can make out of milk foam.

What he loves most is the contact with customers. Mustafa has a sense of humor and uses it every day. "We laugh and have fun," he said, and he enjoys it most when he can see how much the customers enjoy it too. Behind the counter, his favorite drink to make is a V60, and his favorite beans are Ethiopian.

His nightmare comes right after he has finished a drawing: a customer asking for sugar on top. He says it, and laughs.

The man who pours seahorses

Robert G. Fuasa can make a seahorse appear in a cup of coffee, and he is very proud of it. It is the piece he shows his 5-year young son, the proof of what his father does all day.

Eight years ago, he wasn't pouring anything. He was a machine operator in a factory in the Philippines, with a degree in mechanical technology and no plan to work with coffee at all.

Then he arrived in the UAE, took a job as a barista, and stayed.

"What made me get into coffee was experiencing valued and respected it is in the country. There is something so special about being able to work with something like that," he said.

He has now spent almost four years at H's Coffee & Bakery. Everything he knows about the craft, he learned there: the beans, which he says are of higher quality than what he knew at home, and the latte art on top of the cup.

What keeps him behind the counter is the people. "I like the contact with the people," he said.

His pet peeve is small but telling. After he has spent time on a seahorse, some customers reach for a spoon and stir it away.

"I expect they will take a picture and post it," he said with a big laugh. "But they just use the spoon." When he is not making seahorses, he plays basketball.

The person behind the cup

Somewhere in Abu Dhabi this morning, a barista is pouring a seahorse into a cup of coffee. A few feet away, another is dialing in a V60 with Ethiopian beans. Someone is adding a Turon latte to an order of Spanish lattes, and someone is laughing off another request for sugar.

None of them grew up here. All of them came because of coffee.

You will finish your cup in ten minutes. They will make hundreds more before the day ends and for the person behind the counter, every single one will still matter.