Ghent's oldest coffee house

In the early 1930s, Erminio Mazzaro, a young Italian from near Padua emigrated to Ghent. In 1937, Erminio and his wife Bertha moved into Donkersteeg, where they started a coffee roastery and shop.



Erminio soon noticed that Belgians drank their coffee differently from Italians. He conceived the plan to design his own coffee machine, which would serve coffee according to the tastes of his Belgian clientele. In Italy, he set up a small coffee machine company, which he transferred to Destelbergen around the mid-1960s. Meanwhile, a coffee room had also been added on the ground floor of the coffee roastery. There you could try the delicious coffee that was roasted and ground there. In addition to locals from Ghent, a lot of guest workers visited the place at that time.



In 1991, Tom Duran took over the business. He roasts his coffee in a roastery in Boekhoute. Behind the counter is Christine Berth. The brown coffee house got a lick of paint, the ceiling was renewed, the tube lights have been replaced with warmer lighting, there are new tables and chairs and new coffee grinders, but the atmosphere of yesteryear remains. You can still go to Mokabon for a nononsense cup of coffee and hand-ground coffee beans.