Like so many restaurants in Mexico City, tables, decor, and customers spill out onto the sidewalk, where everything happens anyway. The interior, although dim, is almost besides the point. A small, shy barista in her late twenties tells me in lilted English that the cafe is inspired by modern coffee shops in Melbourne and America, and that their beans are grown in Chiapas and then roasted in Vera Cruz.

I order a shot of espresso, drawn from a gleaming white La Marzocco GB5 S sitting on the arced, unpolished cement counter, and watch traffic pass while pondering the wild, hyperreal illustrations that paper adjacent avocado walls: a human banana, Aquaman, a woodblock print of a group of a group of woman holding candles.

At $30,000 US dollars, the machine that produced my coffee is worth more than the median wage in Mexico City; perhaps more than the value of the entire shop in which it is housed.