@kettleandcrane

A Belarusian and a Spaniard open a coffee shop in Oost

One of us was born next to a marsh in southern Belarus, the other 2,300 kilometres away in Zaragoza. Every autumn the same flock of cranes flies over both of our home towns, and that is where our name comes from.

3 min read

Maksim and Inés, tired and proud, outside the café on opening day, under the Kettle & Crane sign, with Bulba lying by the door behind them

We are the two people behind the counter at Kettle & Crane, on the corner in the Indische Buurt. This is the first article in our journal, so it seemed right to start by telling you who we are.

Maksim

I grew up in Pinsk and spent my summers in my grandmother's village, picking mushrooms at dawn and listening to the cranes go over. I spent eight years writing software, first in Minsk and then in Amsterdam, where I moved in January 2021. Somewhere along the way I bought a tiny roaster for the balcony and set off the smoke alarm twice. Now I roast here on Mondays and Thursdays.

Maksim on a small Amsterdam balcony in 2021, waving a tea towel at a cloud of smoke rising from a tiny coffee roaster on a folding table

That is me in 2021, on the balcony of my first Amsterdam flat, about four seconds before the smoke alarm went off for the second time. My neighbour took the photo, and then reported me to the building manager.

Two months after I arrived, I went to a public cupping in Oud-West with a refractometer and a notebook, because I wanted to measure what I was tasting. The woman running it looked at the refractometer for a long time.

The red enamel kettle with white spots, on the shelf above our espresso machine, belonged to my grandmother Halina. She put it on the stove for every visitor. It does not work, and it is not for sale, however nicely you ask.

Inés

I grew up in Zaragoza drinking café con leche in my aunt's café-bar, made from beans roasted with sugar until they shone. Two years in Melbourne showed me what coffee could taste like. I moved to Amsterdam in 2019, ran a bar in Oud-West, and finished fourth in the Dutch Barista Championship in 2023. I still talk about the fourth.

Inés on stage at the 2023 Dutch Barista Championship, setting four cappuccinos in front of the judges under bright stage lights

That is me in 2023, on stage, eleven minutes into a fifteen-minute routine, still believing I could win. I came fourth.

I was the one running that cupping, and I asked the man with the refractometer if he was an inspector. He came back every Saturday for six weeks before he asked me out, to a herring stall. I still hold that against him.

Why Amsterdam

We have been together since May 2021. When we started talking about a shop, Amsterdam was the obvious place. Neither of our countries could work for both of us, and this is the city where we had each arrived as outsiders. Here a café run in English, Spanish, Dutch and Belarusian is ordinary.

The kettle and the crane

The kettle in our name is the one above the machine. The crane is the bird we both grew up watching. Common cranes nest in the marshes around Pinsk in summer and spend the winter at the Gallocanta lagoon, south of Zaragoza. Birds ringed in Polesie have been counted at Gallocanta. We will tell you the full story when they fly south again in October.

This journal will have one article a week, written by one of us or both, and signed so you know who to argue with. You can expect roasting, brewing at home, the farms in Huila, the people who work here and the food we grew up on.

Come and say hello. The bar opens at 7:30 every weekday, and on Mondays and Thursdays the roaster is running behind the glass in the back room. Knock, and we will show you what is in the drum.

Inés and Maksim

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