Muss Café — Restaurant in Oaxaca

This place is all paint and no substance. No, seriously. Let me explain:

The space is beautiful. The food is beautiful. The baristas draw latte art like champs (speaking of, they prominently display their EK43, Marzocco, and E65, which is a good sign usually). It's like a mini European plaza outside. The service is attentive but not great; nothing worth writing home about.

Let's talk about coffee first. This'll be a bit geek-centric, but the gist is this: all style, no substance. The training needs a lot of work. I'll point out a few specifics I noticed: they have an auto-dose function but ignore it in favor of scooping off excess coffee grounds from the baskets. This leads to inconsistency. They use a pricey coffee bed-leveler incorrectly. This leads to inconsistency. They tamp poorly. This leads to inconsistency. Why spend absolute gobs of money on premium equipment then not bother to train the staff on it? I think it's because the equipment is just for show. Most of the prep time for drinks was pouring art, which is fine, but fine is the best I can say.

The food was the real issue here. There are some really good cafes in Oaxaca, and this one seems to be doing well because it is beautiful, not because the food tastes good. Every ingredient on our plates was cooked to one ubiquitous texture. Nothing was seasoned. There was no flavor, no aroma, and no texture. But at least it was beautifully plated, right?

Prices were normal.

I highly recommend you avoid this place, and if you check out my reviews, I did go to some actually good cafes...

Muss Café is definitely a must in Oaxaca City. After a very long trip we were in need of a very good coffee, and browsing on @googlemaps and @instagram this looked like one of the best cafés downtown since it had great reviews and pictures, therefore, we decided to stop by. For starters, it is located on a very beautiful old building with a contemporary touch. It has a beautiful inside patio which we were not able to enjoy because it was fully booked, but we will definitely go back to enjoy it. We ordered an americano with steamed milk and a cold brew- both were absolutely delicious. The menu has plenty of healthy options for breakfast, we tried the avocado toast (Green tomatoes + feta cheese + olive oil + sourdough), and a danish bread. It is a good place to work since the WiFi and the...

It was a very cute cafe, the latte I ordered was delicious, but the breakfast not so much.

Service was okay. When I walked in I wasn't greeted, I was the one who initially said hello and asked for the menu. I sat down and ordered and my food and latte was brought out to me fairly quickly. I was polite the whole time and said thank you to the staff, but no response from the staff. While I was there I noticed that when tourists (USA/ Europeans) walked in they were greeted and the staff were friendly to them and seemed happy to help them out.

If you are Mexican visiting your country I wouldn't recommend this place. Personally I won't be coming back, bummer b/c their...