Gio Visitacion, owner of the Good Cup Coffee Company and 2020 Philippine Brewers Cup champion, patterns the sessions after the Japanese omakase where guests get to meet the chef, see the ingredients, and watch their food prepared right in front of them. Based on the chef’s interaction with the guests, the chef decides what to serve the guests.
This writer spent a morning with Visitacion for a special preview of what goes on in a Barista Table session. As we settled down, we admired the tastefully decorated coffee haven. The highlight is the fully decked out coffee bar complete with the just released San Remo Cube home espresso machine and a Mahlkönig EK43 grinder. This is the kind of setup coffee home brewers’ dreams are made of.
The first brew punctuated that this wasn’t going to be any ordinary coffee session. The Lamastus Family Gesha beans prepared with a v60 were tea-like, with a notes of pineapple, showed us why coffee from Panama is among the most expensive, and most coveted in the specialty coffee world. As we wrapped and said our goodbyes, the barista said that guests can bring home a 20-gram sampler of their favorite beans from the session.