How is the Ethiopian coffee brand Tomoca? Where can you buy Tomoca coffee?

TO.MO.CA.: Addis Ababa's No.1 Espresso Bar

TO.MO.CA. Coffee, the leading espresso bar in Ethiopia's capital, is a family-run business that has been operating since 1953. Its founder read the growth of coffee culture early, paired it with the finest local beans from exceptional growing regions, and built a following among office workers and young people. The setting is Western in style, serving freshly brewed espresso and packaged coffee beans. There are only a few high tables, and most customers stand to drink.

I. TO.MO.CA. Coffee Beans and Ground Coffee

Product name: TO.MO.CA. Coffee Beans / Ground Coffee

Origin: Ethiopia

Composition: Harar coffee beans (roasted)

Roast level: City roast

Taste: Slightly sweet with a gentle fruit acidity and excellent sweetness, carried by a distinctive mellow body. Its sweetness, acidity, and bitterness are strikingly elegant.

Aroma: Rich fruit fragrance with grassy notes.

Appearance: Small beans with uneven coloration.

II. Brewing Methods

Note that this is ground coffee, not instant. You can extract its flavor with an espresso machine, a moka pot, a siphon, or filter paper. If you have no specialist equipment, you only need a small pot for water or milk. Bring the water to a boil, add the coffee, and simmer for 10-20 minutes, using roughly 1-2 scoops of coffee for 2 cups of water, measured with a coffee scoop or an ordinary small dining spoon. Strain the brewed coffee 2-3 times through a fine sieve or filter paper, then adjust to taste. If you do not drink your coffee black, add milk, condensed milk, brown sugar, white sugar, or creamer. Unsweetened, it is quite bitter, which should suit dedicated coffee drinkers.

III. Judging Freshness

Smell: fresh beans have a rich aroma; poor beans smell unpleasant.

Sight: good beans are complete and plump; poor beans are broken and irregular.

Touch: fresh beans feel crisp and release fragrance when they crack.

Color: very dark beans brew bitter coffee, while beans with a yellow cast brew coffee with more acidity.

Ethiopia is the birthplace of coffee, and its history and traditional methods earn it that title. The English word "coffee" is said to descend from the Ethiopian place name Kaffa. Legend holds that around 900 AD a shepherd in the Kaffa region was grazing his flock in the mountains when he noticed the sheep fighting over a kind of red berry. After eating it, the flock grew unusually lively. Fearing they had eaten something harmful, he spent an anxious night, only to find them perfectly fine the next day. He gathered the wild fruit and boiled it to quench his thirst, found the liquid wonderfully fragrant, and felt a surge of energy after drinking it. He began cultivating the plant, and from there coffee spread across Ethiopia and eventually the world.

Ethiopian coffee is meant to be clean, green, and organic. Traditional methods persist, with coffee trees tended by hand; fertilizer comes mainly from fallen leaves, dry grass, and animal manure rather than the pesticides and herbicides used on a large scale elsewhere.

In the West, "Mocha" refers not only to a coffee variety but also to brewing methods, equipment, and preparation styles. The name traces back to the Yemeni port of Mocha, and Ethiopia's dry-processed coffees, Harar above all, have long been associated with it. Most Mocha-style beans are dry-processed, though so-called premium washed versions exist. They are prized for their acidity, with a slight sweetness, subtle wine-like notes, and lower caffeine.

IV. About TO.MO.CA.

The shop is very small and yet world-famous. It has appeared in Lonely Planet, and enthusiasts travel from around the world to drink a cup here.

It sits in an unassuming small building. Without a guide or a local's help, you will not find it, and even standing in front of it you may not believe it. Ask a taxi driver in Addis Ababa, though, and everyone knows it. There are no branches anywhere in the world, only this one. On the weekend, when the shop can draw tour groups, it is extremely busy: the entire left side fills with people queuing to pay, and on the right there are only three tables in the whole shop, with no chairs. Everyone stands, drinks quickly, and moves on.

FrontStreet Coffee Recommendation

If Harar's dry-processed, wine-tinged character appeals to you, Ethiopia is worth exploring more widely, because few places offer such variety. The most natural starting point is FrontStreet Coffee's washed Yirgacheffe: clear jasmine florals and bright citrus acidity, from a small town in southern Ethiopia that stays cool and misty year-round, where thousands of coffee trees grow and give the cup its floral-fruit balance, light elegant body, and tea-like finish, more like a clean glass of lemon tea than a heavy brew.

Ethiopia's smallholders usually deliver their cherry to a village-level processing station, which is why cooperative names appear on so many labels. FrontStreet Coffee's Gedeb cooperative is a good example. Gedeb sits in the Woka area at the southeastern edge of Yirgacheffe and was originally part of the Woka cooperative within the YCFCU before becoming an independent single-origin lot; its roughly 300 member farmers strip the fruit before drying, which lets the bean's own aromatics come through as citrus and lemon with elegant white florals, bright and fine throughout.

Natural processing tells a different story. FrontStreet Coffee's natural Red Cherry lot removes damaged or moldy fruit, then dries the rest in the sun for two weeks until the sugars and essence of the pulp have soaked into the bean; the fruit is hulled when moisture falls to 12%, and the beans are density- and color-sorted and hand-picked for defects. The result is clean and lifted, with the deep fruit aroma the method is known for and flavors of peach, cocoa, honey, and lemon. For even more tropical intensity, FrontStreet Coffee's Hambela Hachira natural comes from a 200-hectare farm in Guji, Sidamo, where ripe cherries are dried on raised beds for 21 days, turned continuously, and hand-sorted for defects every three to five days before hulling. Roasted light-medium, it shows a light fermented wine note, florals, citrus, and mango, with honeyed sweetness, a cocoa undertone, spice, a full body, and a long finish.