A mezzanine is the floor between two floors. The name is the business plan.
One room on Salinas Drive that is a cafe at lunch and a bar at night, and an espresso machine on the counter that explains how it manages both.
A mezzanine is the floor that is not quite a floor. It sits between two stories, belonging to neither, doing a job the building could not do otherwise. Somebody on Salinas Drive named a coffee shop after that, and then built the business to match.
The sign says Mezzanine Coffee and Bar, and the word in the middle is doing more work than a name usually does. Walk in at eleven in the morning and it is a cafe. The same room, the same counter, later on, is a bar. One rent, one staff, two businesses, and the only thing that changes is which menu they hand you.
The machine makes the coffee, and it is not hiding it
The centrepiece on the counter is a white super-automatic with a touchscreen on the front and a QR code on the display. No group head, no portafilter, no barista tamping anything. You order, it grinds and brews and steams, and the cup lands.
Coffee people will have opinions about that and they are entitled to them. But look at what the choice buys in a room that has to be two things. A machine that pulls a consistent shot without a trained barista is what lets one person behind the counter run a cafe at lunch and a bar at night. The equipment is the reason the concept works, which makes it a fair thing to put in the middle of the room rather than tuck away.
If you want the opposite of this, a bar where the whole point is a person weighing beans in front of you, Cebu has that too and it is Commonly Uncommon. Different question, different answer.
The other menu is on a blackboard
Two columns, chalked, headed cocktails and shots, hung with fairy lights and a small figure keeping watch. That board is the tell that you are not in a coffee shop that also happens to sell beer. The second half of the day is planned for, priced and written up.
The rest of the room follows the same logic. Bottles racked behind the counter all day, in full view of somebody drinking a flat white at ten in the morning. A shelf of cat figures, a wealth charm and a jar marked coffee. It is not styled to within an inch of its life and that is a relief in a district where a lot of new rooms are.
Eat the silog
The plate that arrived was a proper silog: two slabs of luncheon meat seared dark at the edges, a fried egg, garlic rice, and sausages, all on a dark round tray. No garnish, no arrangement, nothing trying to be Instagrammed. In a room this conscious of its own concept, the food is refreshingly uninterested in the concept.
That is the right order of priorities for a place people use as an office. Something filling, quickly, while you keep working.
How to go
Where. Unit A07, The Esplanade, Salinas Drive, Lahug, Cebu City. Glass frontage, tower blocks behind it, a chalkboard on the pavement outside.
Getting there. Salinas Drive runs along the edge of Cebu IT Park, so this is a short walk from the district without being inside it, which is most of its appeal. Anything running Lahug puts you within a few minutes on foot.
When to go, and which version you want. Daytime is the cafe, laptops and lunch. Later is the bar. Decide which one you came for before you pick a seat, because the room does not change but the volume does.
Prices and hours. Not quoted here. These photographs are from a single visit on 14 October 2024 and no readable board came back with them. Confirm on their own pages before you go, particularly the closing time, since that is the part a coffee-and-bar is most likely to have changed.
Suroy Wear
A place is mostly its coordinates.
Salinas Drive works because of what it sits beside. Half of what a room in this city can be is decided before anybody picks the furniture. The Cebu Coordinates Tee carries the outline and the numbers. Island Series, ₱999.
Island Series, Cebu Coordinates
Frequently asked questions
Where is Mezzanine Coffee and Bar?
Unit A07, The Esplanade, Salinas Drive, Lahug, Cebu City, a short walk from Cebu IT Park.
Is Mezzanine a coffee shop or a bar?
Both, in the same room at different hours. Coffee and food during the day, a chalked cocktail and shots list later on, with the spirits racked behind the counter the whole time.
Is Mezzanine good for working?
During the day, yes. Table seating, a glass frontage with plenty of light, and a food menu built around silog rather than small plates. Evenings are a different room with the same walls.
Photographed at Mezzanine Coffee and Bar, The Esplanade, Salinas Drive, Cebu City, on 14 October 2024. Fifteen frames across forty-seven minutes, one visit. No prices or hours are quoted because none were legibly recorded. Address checked 30 August 2026.
