LEVA LOVE
"Leva brings with it design, focusing not just on the physical beauty, but also on the satisfaction only found in a truly mechanical system. " La Marzocco
Discover Our New Glenmore Road Home with the LEVA
As one door closes, another opens— Mecca Coffee Glenmore Road is officially here!
Our journey has always been about creating a space where coffee can be appreciated for everything it is, from the hands that carefully grow it to the final cup we hand to you.
This new Paddington spot on Glenmore Road marks our first new store since 2015, and we’re thrilled to be back with a cozy, stylish space in the heart of the fashion precinct.
It’s a return to our roots, bringing the same dedication to specialty coffee quality and community that started on King Street in 2005.
We are serving our premium Moka blend and you might have noticed our coffee machine making quite the statement in Paddington; founder Paul Geshos has a few words to share about why we went with such an iconic choice!
The Backstory
When Charles Babinski (#meccamate @cafeonefourthree / World Barista Champion 2015) first mentioned he was getting the Leva I thought it was madness. I hadn’t seen one in the wild and I don’t think there are many souls brave or silly enough to take this on as their daily driver.
To be fair I hadn’t spent any meaningful time with the Leva X to make any sort of judgement, but was ready to see what he could do with it. It didn’t seem to take long for Charles to get the Leva dialled and I was instantly impressed with the cup quality he was able to achieve with the our specialty coffee Moonwalker blend. I wanted to explore this more and soon found myself behind the counter at Cafe 143 pulling espresso’s.
Soon after this encounter, I met with Barry Moore (Managing Director from La Marzocco Australia). This machine is unlike anything I’ve seen or explored. He was too a fan and wanted to see more Leva’s out there but it is also intimidating and needs to be in capable hands.
La Marzocco had one in their headquarters in Melbourne, gathering dust since 2018. Barry was kind enough to offer a loan of the Leva and provide feedback. This happened as we closed our King St store and in time for the opening of our new Paddington store. We thought this could be the ideal place for a machine of this kind, our space warm, intimate, cozy, great music, delicious coffee made carefully and deliberately on the Leva.
Rediscovering Espresso with the Timeless Art of the LEVA
When I first saw the LEVA X on a factory visit back in 2017 I wasn’t sure what to make of it. To me it seemed like a convoluted way of making espresso and the mechanical aspect of brewing approach seemed a bit archaic. In typical Italian fashion, it came across as a passion project filled with romance of the past, the manual lever machines were ubiquitous in Italy before the progression to a more conventional pump, motor and semi automatic volumetric machines.
The heavily compressed spring did all of the work, no pumps, no motors, completely silent. By pulling down the lever, the piston designed to hold enough water for 2 espresso’s opens up to allow water to pass through for the pre infusion process. Once the lever was released, the loaded spring created enough water pressure to pass through finely ground coffee and extract the emulsified liquid to produce an espresso.
How the Leva X Revolutionises Our Brew Process
1. Extraction Pressure.
The Leva X allows us to work more closely with brew pressure, we can dial in coffees on the fly, with the adjustment of line pressure and peak pressure. This gives us a larger bandwidth to explore nuance, push sweetness or body, acidity or mouthfeel. We’ve come to understand that pressure has an enormous influence on a coffees profile and cup quality.
2. Real time feedback and precision.
The Leva X has live pressure visualisation which is a graphical representation of the extraction. This displays the time and pressure as the extraction progresses and the ability to save a visualisation as a template for future extractions. We can iterate from a base and build out a series of profiles for different specialty coffee beans.
3. Energy efficiency and quietness.
This is a mechanical system that doesn’t require much electronics. Its power consumption is almost exclusively for heating water, there are no pumps that vibrate or motors that are constantly on and off. Making specialty coffee espresso is a completely silent process.
4. Bringing us closer to the brewing process.
This is a completely manual process, each extraction is controlled and manipulated by the barista. There is a certain mindfulness that is required to make coffee on this machine, no more mindlessly pressing buttons and referencing numbers. From adjusting both line and peak pressure to volume control with the cam and lever, this gives us enormous scope to explore the possibilities of extraction. It’s got us questioning everything again.
Experience our premium Moka blend at Glenmore Road—a deliciously refined, specialty coffee that balances clarity and sweetness with a rich, tactile feel, capturing the essence of classic espresso. Here, we’re redefining what a great espresso bar can be.
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