Q+A
What do you think about the coffee community growing in the last five years?
[The growing community] forces everybody to maintain a certain standard. For us, we’re focused on doing everything better. It’s a really great way for everybody to be on their… It raises the bar. If there’s only one good place, it’s easy to slip and not care about the quality. We’ve seen a handful of coffee shops opening in the past few years. It creates a culture there that wasn’t here before and it makes people think differently about coffee. It’s really a great thing. It’s never a competition; we don’t look at it that way.
It’s cool to see that there are options, and places are bringing in roasters that we don’t have, and people have options. It’s great to see shops do that and try to make good coffee and succeeding. There’s a culture here now, that wasn’t there before. More craft coffee shops opening means less people going to Starbucks. These businesses are small locally own business supporting small roasters, and that’s the most important thing, people having options.
Who is your role model?
Mahina (left) pictured with owner of Morning Glass, and her mentor, Eric Rose
Eric Rose. Eric is so committed to using quality ingredients. As much as we can, we’re using local pork. Local beef. He’s taught me how important food is to the bigger picture, the community as a whole. The staff, for sure, inspires me. They bust their butts day in, day out, with very little complaint, and just seeing people committed to our vision is really cool.
Nutella or bacon:
Not a huge Nutella fan. I’ll have to go with bacon on that one. There isn’t any local bacon. Some people are doing it, in house? The bacon train has passed in my mind. Bacon is overdone. (She’s a recovering vegan).
What is your favorite type of coffee?
I tend to like Central American coffees. That tends to be my jam. But constantly blown away by Ethiopians and Kenyan coffees. I do like African coffees a lot as well. Not a huge fan of Indonesians. I do like the more acidic coffees and Indonesians tend to be lower in acid. My favorite coffee this year is probably this Guatemalan we just got from Coava … which is really great.
What’s on your playlist?
A little bit of everything. I love reggae. I love Nina Simone. I’m an old soul. I know very little about contemporary pop culture. I’m like, is this Chris Brown? Drake? I don’t know. I live under a rock.
Any bars or beer places we might bump into you at?
I rarely go out because I start at five most mornings, but I do like Pint + Jigger a lot. They have a better bar in terms of what they stock. I am rarely out at night. But I do love beer. I love going to the Kailua Whole foods and Tamuras. I love IPA’s and have been getting into sours lately. There’s so much similarities between beer and coffee.
