Cafe 51, Coffee Roastery in Ramat Gan, and Coffee Shop in Tel Aviv/Cafe 51
The coffee drops descend slowly but surely into the cup, as if announcing at the right pace the long road they have made - from the plantations of the Quindio district in the western central region of Colombia, straight to one of the million alleys that make up the Ramat Gan Stock Exchange complex.
The drizzle is slow, almost dramatic, and at the end a mug that spews in the air a strong aroma of tea, if not a natural juice stand in the market. The first sip is cautious, but after that the dam is breached. It's caffeinated but clean, sweet and not sugary, and very tasty. Your head stops nodding, the attention threshold drops, and you almost feel the South American air, and the depth that only hard work and professionalism can create.
Almost 12,<> kilometers separate there from mouth, but the hand connects.
The hand connects. Cafe 51/July Izak
Most of all - the Colombian bourbon pin beans and the high-tech equipment that can tell how much "life" is left in the pool, the aggressive vacuum that closes the sack and its price tag, the branding and the passion - Dotan Greenberg's story is the story of the small coffee bush that grows without making a fuss about itself, outside of Cafe 51.
The café on Ahad Ha'am Street in Tel Aviv opened its doors almost exactly eight years ago, and the bush was planted outside a few months later. Today it gently shades the people on the bench below it (who probably don't know that this is what a coffee bush looks like) and occasionally serves to demonstrate what the coffee cherry (with two beans inside) looks like. Real coffee cannot be produced from it, but images of growth and roots, development and patience - there are plenty here.
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The discourse that knows. Cafe 51/July Izak
"I was so unaware that it's just amazing. There were mistakes, but luckily not too serious mistakes. I didn't know anything, and only now do I realize how much I didn't know I didn't know."
"The only job I've ever had in my life is coffee," Greenberg said, "After the army I ended up at Cafe Neto bar in Hod Hasharon because there happened to be a branch at the end of my street, and since then that's pretty much what I've been doing." He passed a "very high standard of kashrut," as he put it, skipped to Greg's Cafe and Hyrcanus Cafe, stopped at the Tel Aviv Cafelix and at the age of only 24 opened Cafe 51.
"I was so unaware that it was just amazing," he admitted, "There were mistakes, but luckily not too serious mistakes. I didn't know anything, and only now do I realize how much I didn't know I didn't know."
The global crossroads that was the coronavirus pandemic pushed him out of the other café he opened at Sarona Market on the one hand, but on the other hand, provided him with an almost mass frozen boost, through masses of Israelis who closed at home, began to miss their pampering cup more and more, and sought to restore, if not upgrade.
"I was doing donkey work at the time - at seven in the morning I got orders, then I roasted, and then I got on the moped and dispersed home to customers," he said. There was a financial blow as well as a blow to morale, because you understood that as a business owner it's just you for yourself, and that no one will help you. It was an important lesson, and a lesson."
Three years later, the lesson was not internal convergence and a business driven by worry, but expansion and thoughts of a very far, and very large, future. Or in other words - a huge roastery out of thin air.
Out of nowhere. Greenberg at the Coffee Roastery 51/Yuli Izak
The entrance to the place is almost Harry Potter in its characteristics, and is accompanied by sincere concern for the fate of those who come, lest they make a mistake in one of the 13 strange doors of the alley, or suddenly find themselves at one of the most random police stations in Gush Dan, the nearby neighborhood.
Either way, the navigational effort pays off, eventually revealing a large space of at least two floors, which strikes a nice balance between industrial design and designed industry. I want to say, here they make coffee and here they drink it.
"There was a diamond polishing business here, with someone who worked here for sixty years, and he took out his last order two days before he passed away," Greenberg said, "His family is amazing and when they came here after the renovation I saw tears in their eyes."
The polishing machine is no longer here, obviously. Its place has been taken by a formidable Israeli roasting oven, which sends a long, long pumping arm up the building, up to the roof, where the steam is scattered, according to law and standard. This move, which distances passersby from the aroma of coffee that has just been roasted, could not have existed any other bureaucratically, but wow how much the area would enjoy if the rules were bent a bit here (and the pipe along with them, and then "everyone looks at the chimneys, and slowly, their nose fills with the smell of coffee" of course).
Bending required. Cafe 51/Walla System!, Yaniv Granot
Greenberg smiles when he comes to work every morning, and that's the aspiration of every one of us. His eyes light up when he talks about coffee, sparkle right when he gives me a tour of the machines and computer screens, and stay that state even when the equipment room door opens.
Those eyes, however, reach their peak of brilliance when he bends down to the bottom drawer in the kitchen and pulls out suitcase after suitcase—a collection you see in movies with spies and villains who want to smuggle something out.
"This is my lab," he declares, pulling out delicate equipment that can measure color and hue, moisture percentages and active water in each coffee bean, as well as a kind of brew meter that sets extraction percentages, allowing him to tune customers and baristas in coffee shops, telling them how much water to use and what temperature to reach.
Dissolution of obsession. Cafe 51/Nadav Margalit
"If Strauss sells coffee beans, it means there's interest and demand, and the bet I took was right."
In the end, I ask him, this bar needs to meet the Israeli customer somewhere, the one who still prefers Turkish coffee and drinks a mythical powdery miracle. He is aware of all this, of course, but claims a higher meeting point than is commonly assessed.
"Israelis started wanting their good coffee during the pandemic, and in recent years it hasn't stopped, on the contrary. We see more and more demand and buying beans, as opposed to ground coffee, and I see how the field I deal with is growing and gaining momentum, getting a place on the shelf in the supermarket, and in the all-Israeli experience, and not only among certain strata," he explained, "If Strauss sells coffee beans, it means that there is interest and there is demand, and the bet I took was right."
For him, the focus on specialty coffee – coffee that undergoes rigorous filtering and sorting processes, while insisting on fair trade, and is roasted in small quantities – is not just a matter of taste, but "the right thing to do and the moral thing to do." Yes, even if the price speaks. "This is a market that, of course, is built on supply and demand. For every specialty café that opens, a new section opens that wants to provide this coffee, and because it is built in such a way that each step of the way will receive its right value, we pay for each of these stages. One plus one and another, and you get a high price, yes, but we're not the most expensive in the market and we don't want to be like that."
Guest house. Cafe 51/July Izak
What he does want, still, and probably forever, is to host. Also in the roasting house, where surprises are planned such as the Omaxa "meal" based on special coffee drinks, and also near the bush on Ahad Ha'am Street.
There, he knows how to deal correctly with Israelis who love black coffee and respond to the local obsession that is all kinds of "disassembled" and upside down on water, boiling and foaming to the point of oblivion. "We come to teach, but we don't come to educate," he described the system, "we know how to take requests and demands and break down what everyone really wants to have in his cup, according to his method and ours. It takes years to learn this, but in the end there is a satisfied customer and personal integrity that is not harmed."
These customers, in the café and at home, are his internal combustion engine. "As far as I'm concerned, being in touch with them is more than making a living. I derive pleasure and satisfaction from it, and I will never give up on them." Thus, he leaves his personal WhatsApp available for questions, and is happy to see pictures of their espresso. "I learn a lot from it, and I also learn what they like."
Meanwhile, the coffee bush continues to grow in the small courtyard of Tel Aviv, and the entire circle closes with something sweet next to it. "I'm a coffee person, and obviously that's our main product, but if you ask me what the ideal table of Cafe 51 is, how do I see our best experience," he described, "it would be a cup of coffee and a good yeast cake next to it." Something to drink, something to eat, something to look at and also something to learn from. "That's how we started, and that's how it still works."
Cafe 51, Ahad Ha'am 51, Tel Aviv, and a roastery at 17 Harkon Street, Ramat Gan
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