Two Events This Week That Are Worth Your Time
Dubai has a way of making things happen fast. One week you’re reading about an idea, the next week it’s already a room full of people having the conversation. This week, Mokha 1450 is behind two events that caught my attention, and I’ll be at both.
One is a dialogue. The other is an experience. Together, they say a lot about where specialty coffee in this city is heading.
Coffee Break Vol. 1
April 23, Mokha 1450 at Modora Home
The coffee industry is under real pressure right now. Climate volatility in producing regions, shifting regulatory standards in major markets, supply chain disruptions that don’t seem to be slowing down. These aren’t abstract problems. They affect farmers, roasters, importers, and eventually the cup you’re drinking.
All of this will be discussed at Coffee Break this at Mokha 1450’s. Not a panel in the corporate sense, but a conversation where people with actual experience in the room push back on each other.
Meet the Speakers
CEO, Mokha 1450
Former President of SCA
Few people carry a view of the industry as wide as Garfield’s. As someone who has led the SCA and continues to build one of the region’s most recognised specialty coffee brands, he brings both the global picture and the ground-level reality.
Abdulla Al Shaibani
Group CEO, Axeed
Abdulla brings a strategic leadership perspective to the conversation, focusing on what it means to lead an organisation through periods of uncertainty and change.
Khalid Al Mulla
CEO, Dubai Coffee Museum
Khalid connects the dots between where coffee has come from and where it is now. His presence grounds the conversation in history and culture, which matters when the industry is moving this fast.
Founder and CEO, The GRIF Collective
Jennifer adds an entrepreneurial and creative lens to the room, drawing from her experience building a platform that sits at the intersection of culture, community, and commerce.
Editorial Leader and Industry Commentator
Paul brings the storytelling side. Someone who has spent time observing and writing about the industry tends to ask the questions others in the room haven’t thought to ask yet.
Zeena Zalamea
Broadcaster and Entrepreneur
The session is moderated by Zeena, whose role is to move the conversation past surface-level networking into something more honest and useful.
The question they’re sitting with is a good one.
Dubai has managed to navigate global disruptions in ways most cities haven’t. Can that same resilience mindset apply to how people in coffee think about what’s coming?
I don’t know the answer yet. But I want to be in the room when that question gets asked.
Here are the event details:
🗓️ April 23, 2026
🕕 3:00 PM
📍Mokha 1450 Luxury Specialty Coffee at Modora Home, Umm Suqeim St.
🎟️ AED 59
Sun x Set
April 25, Mokha 1450 Coffee Lounge
This one is different. Less talking, more sensing.
Mokha 1450 is hosting an immersive evening at their Coffee Lounge in Golden Mile, Palm Jumeirah. The focus is on aroma, flavor, and what happens when you slow down enough to actually pay attention to what’s in the cup.
Three signature drinks anchor the evening. Smoke and Diamonds is a zero-proof coffee cocktail with smoky notes and diamond-shaped ice. The Desert Flower reimagines Arabic coffee with saffron, honey, and rose water, served over an ice sphere with the UAE’s national flower inside. Table-side brewing gives you a front row seat to the process itself, with baristas working through technique at your table.
The centrepiece is the olfactory experience. SCA-certified experts walk you through single-origin beans, the role of brewing method, and how glassware changes what you taste. It sounds straightforward but it rarely is once you’re actually in it.
There’s also a curated music journey tied to the origins of the beans from Jamaica, Ethiopia, Cuba, Colombia, and even Yemen. A nice touch, if you ask me.
I’m going in curious. Multisensory coffee experiences can go either way. Done well, they shift how you perceive a cup long after the evening is over. Done badly, they feel like theatre. Mokha 1450 usually gets this right.
Here are the event details:
🗓️ April 25, 2026
🕕 5:00 PM to 10:00 PM
📍 Mokha 1450 Coffee Lounge, Palm Jumeirah
🎟️ From AED 125
Two events, two different sides of coffee. One asks you to think. The other asks you to feel. Both are worth showing up for.
If you’re in Dubai this week and coffee means something to you, you already know what to do
