It’s not often that’d you’d come across a small coffee shop here in this city that takes its coffee seriously enough to actually be more deserving of your attention than most of the larger and more ubiquitous coffee chains – coffee houses that most people usually flock to and associate with the term “great coffee”; I’m gonna tell you straight up: Origin Coffee is just that.

Origin Coffee sits in a quiet corner near the Makati Avenue side of Chino Roces, in Makati City. Though it’s just one block away from the main avenue, it’s rather easy to miss unless you’re really paying attention to the surroundings while passing by. That’s disadvantageous for both the cafe itself and the people who are missing what is perhaps one of the best cafes in town.

Let me further drive that point home with a short version of this review: Origin Coffee has incredible food and arguably the best espresso I have ever tasted, to date. It’s that good. In fact, you can skip reading this article if you want and go check it out now.

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A couple of days back my friend Lace told me about the new coffee shop - Mozu Cafe - that just opened on Amethyst Street in Ortigas. So I decided to check it out and headed over there yesterday for lunch and of course, coffee.

Mozu Cafe is one of those cafes that’s situated away from the crowded places but draws people in because of its charm (and menu, of course); located on Amethyst Street, it’s about a 10-minute walk away from SM Megamall and the Philippine Stock Exchange; You’ll find Mozu Cafe tucked away in the Linden Suites’ rear parking facade. Ambiance-wise, it’s very cozy: soft lights, wood-paneled interiors, soft music (of the pop variety moreso than the jazz typical of the more ubiquitous coffee shops), and… ESPN. They have a flatscreen TV with ESPN on mute while the music plays. I don’t know about you, but seeing football players kneed in the groin to the tune of Dashboard Confessional’s “Stolen” is an amusing-if-not-weird experience that invokes mixed “feelings”, to say the least. But I digress.

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I decided to sit down at the Cafe Breton to see what they had to offer. I had already eaten and have had coffee here several times before, but this is the first time I’ve really focused on their coffee.

Cafe Breton has this homey, country-style aesthetic going for them that gives their stores a warmer ambiance as compared to, say, the somewhat uniform-and-more-prefabricated-look that Starbucks stores usually exhibit, and the art house motifs that some other coffee shops have. It’s got pastel-colored walls, cuckoo clocks, tea sets, framed maps, colored bottles and jars, and even picket fences. Some people may not dig how it looks, but for me it’s a nice break from all those brown color schemes that a lot of coffee shops go with.

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