Mostra Coffee's Nick Berardi named No. 1 bean roaster in the U.S.

Mostra Coffee’s Nick Berardi named No. 1 bean roaster in the U.S.

Nick Berardi of San Diego's Mostra Coffee, center, at the 2022 U.S. Coffee Championships in April.

May 26, 2022 2:05 PM PT

Nick Berardi, the head roaster at San Diego’s 9-year-old Mostra Coffee Co., has been named America’s No. 1 U.S. Roaster in the U.S. Coffee Championships.

Berardi beat out 21 other professional roasters at the Specialty Coffee Expo in Boston last month. As America’s top roaster, Berardi will head to Milan, Italy, this summer to compete in the world championships. Two years ago, Mostra earned its first national prize when Roast Magazine named it the 2020 Micro-Roaster of the Year.

Mostra was founded in 2013 by a team of four Filipino American friends, Jelynn Malone, Beverly Magtanong, Sam Magtanong and Mike Arquines. Mostra, the Italian word for “performance,” sources it beans from all over the world, including the Philippines. Headquartered in North County, it operates coffee shops in Carmel Mountain Ranch, 4S Ranch and Bankers Hill. Visit mostracoffee.com.

Kragen writes about restaurants for the San Diego Union-Tribune. Email her at pam.kragen@sduniontribune.com.

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Pam Kragen

Pam Kragen is the arts and entertainment editor, as well as the chief theater, dining and opera critic, for the San Diego Union-Tribune. She joined the Union-Tribune staff in October 2012 after 27 years at the North County Times, where she served as the Arts & Features Editor, as well as the paper’s longtime arts writer and theater and opera critic. She is the co-founder of the San Diego Theatre Critics Circle. She holds a bachelor of arts degree in journalism from San Diego State University and completed fellowships in theater criticism at the University of Southern California and opera-classical music criticism at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism. And in 2022, she was chosen as one of the fellows in the prestigious National Critics Institute, run by the Eugene O’Neill Theater Center in Waterf, Conn.