Sofia Galea runs the bar at Prima Roastery in Valletta. Two-time finalist, Malta Barista Championship. Pulls the cleanest cortado in the city.
What you notice first is that Sofia doesn't talk about coffee the way most people who care about coffee do. There's no jargon, no name-dropping, no anxious reach for credentials. The work happens in the cup. The conversation happens after.
Sofia came to the role the way most of the best baristas on the island did — slowly, by way of a couple of false starts and one very good shop that taught the lesson properly. Whatever else is true about ${b.venue}, the bar is run by someone who genuinely doesn't want to make you a bad cup.
On the day we sat down, the espresso programme was tracking better than the last review captured. Sofia talks about milk the way someone else might talk about a discipline they trained for — there's a method, the method is teachable, and the method is what separates a good shop from a great one.
We left after forty minutes with two coffees and a list of questions we didn’t get to. Sofia doesn’t tend to have time for long interviews — there’s a queue, and the queue is the point — but the answers were the kind that stay with you longer than the questions did.
Sofia is one of the reasons the next twelve months of Maltese coffee are going to look different from the last twelve. We'll be back.