Two friends, one warehouse, a lot of moss.
Moss & Mug opened in 2019 in a converted warehouse in Alserkal Avenue. This is how it happened, and what we're trying to do.
A lab, a hotel kitchen, and a farmers' market.
Layla moved to Dubai in 2014 to work in a lab and spent her weekends roasting coffee on a popcorn machine. Tom arrived the same year to run a hotel pastry kitchen and missed making bread. They met at a farmers' market in Al Barsha, argued about milk, and decided to open a room where the coffee and the bread were both taken seriously.
Warehouse 46 had tall windows and a landlord who didn't mind plants. That was enough.
Every Tuesday, in a 12 kg drum.
We roast at the back of the warehouse. Two single origins at a time, chosen by cupping rather than by story, and the house blend we've called Warehouse 46 since the first week.
Nothing is served more than ten days after roasting. Nothing goes on the bar before it's four days old.
Started the night before, shaped at four.
Tom's laminated dough is started the evening before, rested overnight, and shaped at four in the morning. The first croissants come out at 6:40.
The cardamom knots are the thing people drive across the city for. We make sixty a day and stop there.
A small set of rules, kept since day one.
No laptops after five on weekends. No music louder than a conversation. Plants in every window, real ones, watered by whoever gets in first.
It's not a concept. It's a neighbourhood room that happens to take its coffee seriously.
Eight people, two rooms.
Most of us have been here since the first year. You'll usually find one of these four behind the counter.