Image: Paul Gordon
What do you get when you integrate a café and recording studio? Ambient café bliss, that’s what.
Race Café – The Studio is unlike anything Queensland, maybe even the Australian café scene, has witnessed.
The café is the third addition to Owner Paul and Sabine Gordon’s Race Café Network. Each café has its own unique identity. Race Café – The Espresso Bar in the Brisbane CBD comes with its own tattoo artist, and Race Café – The Workshop, shares its premises with a vintage motorcycle shop in Nundah, Queensland.
“I love coffee, I love music and I love motorcycles – these are all passions of mine,” says Paul.
After spending four years in Berlin, experiencing the cool spaces that embraced ‘counter culture rebellion’, Paul came back to Australia with the idea to do something just a little bit different.
“I wanted the name of my café to represent the counter culture rebellion and was inspired by the Mods vs Rockers conflicting British subcultures,” says Paul.
Located in Fortitude Valley in Queensland, Race Café – The Studio not only has a strong coffee focus but a passion for supporting local musicians. “Customers can come in, sit down and have a coffee and watch local musicians record their music,” says Paul. “Cafés used to be a place where people would discuss intellectual subjects and talk of different ideas, so I thought why not capture that in music.”
Paul also runs Balcony TV in Brisbane, an online viral music show featuring musicians and bands on balconies around the world.
Race Café – The Studio uses Mocopan’s Allegria blend and occasionally runs an Ethiopian single origin on their Adonis machine from Victoria Arduino.
“The coffee culture here in Queensland is really exciting. These days every small metro area has a killer café,” says Paul.
There’s only one other thing that could entertain Race Café customers – and that’s the half-pipe skateboard ramp customers must climb over to enter the café – if the caffeine isn’t enough of a fix.
For curious customers, Paul’s advice is simple. “Expect the unexpected,” he says. “We want the audience to leave guessing and wanting more. This is not just a coffee experience, but a theatre one as well.”
