"I'll have a flat white with skimmed milk, please."
“No. What would you like?”
“I can’t have a skinny flat white?”
“No. You can have a flat white, but it’ll be the way it’s meant to be.”
In an instant, I get it. What I have just asked of the man who goes by the name of Dima is entirely off limits. He’s the resident head barista at Cafe Rider, the speciality coffee bar in Dubai that’s been making rather large waves recently just on the outskirts of the city’s Al Quoz industrial zone.
Cafe Rider celebrated only its first anniversary this month, and when you consider what an effect it’s had on the UAE’s motorcycling (and coffee) scene in the year it’s been open for business, you can’t help but be impressed.
When my flat white arrives (made with full-fat milk, naturally), I don’t just “get it” – I fully understand. This is coffee on another level from the chain outlets ubiquitous across the UAE and the world. It is, and I choose my words carefully here, utterly sublime. This is art in a cup. Dima takes his craft very seriously, and has been known to travel to exotic climes such as Panama to hand-pick the cherries himself – I love this sort of obsessive dedication in a world of ordinariness. You can see in the way he stares at the coffees as he pours them, that each one, to him, is a unique creation that should be treated with respect.
Dmitriy Grekhov, to give Dima his full name, won the 2014 UAE Barista Championship in November; next month, he’s heading to Seattle in the United States to represent this country in the world championships. You want the best coffee in town? This is it. The UAE Championship takes place over four days, and, according to the organising body, “involves each barista preparing four espressos, four cappuccinos and four original espresso-based signature beverages in a 15-minute performance, set to the music of their choice. As they ready their coffee beverages, contestants engage the audience, explaining their actions and selections, while expertly working on the espresso machine.”
That’s all well and good, you might remark, but what on earth does this have to do with motoring? That’s where the “Rider” in the cafe’s name comes in, and where things get really interesting for petrolheads. This place is a haven for bikers far and wide, and is proving instrumental in bringing back biking culture, where enthusiasts have the freedom to express themselves with two-wheeled machines that, like Dima’s coffee, can themselves be considered art.
Enter the unassuming-looking premises (it’s on the other side of Umm Suqeim Road to the Lulu supermarket) and initially you’re unaware that anything at all is created here. There are motorcycles for sale, safety gear, retro-inspired merchandise and locally produced art hangs on the walls, with a few tables and chairs sitting adjacent to the coffee bar. But glance to your left and you’ll notice a glass wall, behind which all sorts of magic takes place, as motorcycles are stripped and rebuilt to the most exacting standards.
Don’t get the impression that this is some exclusive members’ club, though. Far from it, because Murtaza Moulvi – who owns and manages Cafe Rider with his wife Nicky (who runs the business day-to-day), his good friend Anwar Hussain and the aforementioned Grekhov – doesn’t want anyone to feel excluded, even if they have no interest whatsoever in two-wheeled transportation.
“There are no badges, no membership cards, none of that nonsense,” he says. “Instead, what we have here is a haven from the madness of city life, where you can come and enjoy food and coffee and great music [the cafe is also occasionally used as a live music venue], where you don’t have to be dressed a particular way. Not everyone here is covered with tattoos, and we have people from all walks of life just heading here to chill out, for a few hours or just a few minutes. The point is everyone is welcome and nobody looks or feels out of place.”
It’s this old-school cafe culture that Moulvi wants to bring back to modern-day Dubai and beyond, offering a glimpse of what life used to be like for what used to be known as “Cafe Racers”. “It all started in the 1940s,” he says, “and the scene lasted four decades – it was the golden age for motorcyclists, when real enthusiasts created their own Bobbers, Choppers, Cafe Racers and Scramblers, made from bikes that were built by popular manufacturers.”
This was the start of customisation – an art form that found its way into the car world, too. After the end of the Second World War, soldiers returned home to their towns and countries with little or no job prospects, but many of them did have newly learnt skills when it came to mechanical things, having been trained as mechanics and engineers. Bored but inspired, many of these people started "chopping" or "bobbing" motorcycles, making them look, ride, sound and handle differently. It gave these people a sense of identity, and soon an entire subculture was born, immortalised by films such as The Wild One and Easy Rider. But there's nothing hooligan-esque about Moulvi or Cafe Rider – things have changed in the space of seven decades.
Not all for the better, mind, as Moulvi laments. “Over time, the big multinational corporations ended up brainwashing people, bringing about uniformity. Bikes became bigger, faster, heavier, more chrome, wider tyres – and motorcycling itself became a status symbol, rather than a lifestyle choice. But we’re starting to see a backlash of sorts against ordinariness and a return to the thinking that you don’t need to be a retired banker to ride a nice motorcycle; you might just be someone who dares to be different. That’s what Cafe Rider is all about.”
Behind that glass wall, two engineers go about their business, stripping a motorcycle down to its most basic components. It will be rebuilt to a customer’s exact specification, and soon emerge as an entirely different, bespoke machine. You don’t have to go about things the long way round, though, and there are usually a few completed motorcycles on display in the cafe that you could buy here and now.
But isn’t motorcycling for the kamikaze among us? Isn’t it too dangerous on our roads for riders to safely enjoy the unique thrills that only two wheels can offer? Unsurprisingly, Moulvi won’t hear of it. On most weekends, rides out of the city from Cafe Rider are arranged. The routes are well away from the insane congestion, the daily grind and the inattentive drivers that don’t seem to know or care when a motorcyclist is sharing their road space.
If you want to really see the beauty of this country, you need to experience it on a motorcycle, and these runs help in achieving that goal for many. The mornings out can attract anything from five to 25 people, and they can be as short as a 50-kilometre ride or as long as a coast-to-coast epic – like the scene itself, there are no rules.
There’s no denying, though, that motorcycling in the UAE is a hobby best enjoyed at certain types of the year. As one of the regulars who rides out with the guys who meet at Cafe Rider, a man known simply as Phil says once the weather starts to get really hot, they’ll either head out earlier in the morning or, more likely, abandon the rides for the summer and pick up again once the cooler weather returns. “If we’re all riding so early that it’s dark, it kind of defeats the purpose a bit, doesn’t it?” he reasons.
For those times, there’s always the coffee, though, and while the incendiary temperatures of summer will be enough to put off most people from biking for pleasure, these months will prove to be an ideal time to build that bike you’ve had in your head since you were a kid.
For Moulvi, the cafe represents the culmination of his own personal dream. A man who admits he’s “highly strung, competitive”, he works in the upper echelons of banking, but managed to find time, while living and working in London, to study for six months at the London School of Coffee – an experience that never left him. He’s also been biking for nearly a quarter of a century. As anyone who’s done so will tell you, it too is something you never get out of your system. To be able to combine these two obsessions and turn them into a business that’s so chilled out must be some sort of ultimate dream.
But as he looks back on 12 months of Cafe Rider so far, where does he see it going?
“There are so many ideas in my head for it, so much potential – we want to put on more events, open up to the car scene more, become known more for our art, too,” he says. “We’re on the outskirts of Al Quoz, which if things are done right, could well end up a bit like the Meatpacking District in New York – previously a grimy, industrialised area and now one of the coolest places anywhere. So we’re perfectly placed for that kind of organic expansion.”
Not that Moulvi ever had a business plan. “This was all a complete leap of faith,” he admits. “We just hoped people would feel the same way – Dubai needs things like this; it’s a different kind of experience. We’re where we are today because our approach to advertising has been to simply make sure that whoever comes through the door, they leave having had the best possible experience.”
As I look around, I catch sight of two gentlemen in national dress, a man in a business suit, a young family, some leathered-up dudes and a gaggle of creative types huddled around a couple of laptop computers, making use of the Wi-Fi. You couldn’t hope to find a more varied group of customers, and they’re all here for one thing: a unique experience. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to ask Dima for another flat white.
motoring@thenational.ae
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