Cayman Coffee Exchange

A Modbar counter inside a Grand Cayman resort

Cayman Coffee Exchange pulls espresso through a Modbar system from La Marzocco, which puts the taps at counter height and the barista in front of you instead of behind a machine. That choice, made during a 2021 rebuild of the kitchen and service area, is the whole design brief in one piece of equipment: keep the line moving, keep the person making your drink in view. It is a small counter doing a lot of covers, and every decision in it points the same way.

Coffee, gelato and a fast breakfast

The counter is built for a resort morning. Breakfast burritos and freshly baked pastries handle the early rush, smoothies cover the poolside end of the menu, and picnic lunches are packed for anyone heading out for the day. A Carpigiani case holds gelato, which is the afternoon order and the one that makes most sense in the heat of a beach resort.

The rest of the fit-out serves the same purpose. Rapid-cook ovens finish hot food in minutes, reach-in display cases put prepared items where they can be pointed at rather than ordered off a menu, and the layout was drawn so that personal contact and speed do not cancel each other out. Guests deal with the barista and the coffee crew face to face while the queue keeps moving, which is harder to build than it sounds in a room this size.

Order coffee first, gelato later

Start with an espresso drink. The Modbar is the most deliberate thing in the room and the coffee programme was rebuilt around it, so it is the fairest test of the counter and the clearest reason to choose this over a cup upstairs.

Then use the place the way the layout intends. A breakfast burrito or a pastry in the morning, a picnic lunch if the day is going elsewhere, a smoothie in the middle of the afternoon, gelato later on. It sits inside The Westin Grand Cayman on the West Bay side of the island and it is doing the job of a hotel coffee bar: quick, visible and better equipped than that description usually implies. Treat it as a full dining room and it will disappoint. Treat it as a well-built coffee counter and it will not.