It is always a thrill to run into Greeks somewhere around the world where you least expect to find them. Even though we all know Greeks are everywhere around the globe.

I had such an encounter recently while walking along Avenida Presidente Masaryk in Mexico City. Masaryk Avenue, named after the founder of Czechoslovakia and its first president, is lined with high end fashion and consumer shops making it one of the most expensive streets in Latin America. One of the art galleries along the avenue has a new coffee shop which has a serving window that looks out on the sidewalk. It was from there I heard Greek spoken and was instantly invited over after I had shouted out “Kalimera!”

I would soon find out that this was something much more than yet another chance meeting with Greeks abroad. It was an encounter with the spirit of adventurousness and risk taking that typifies the diaspora Greeks.

To invoke that spirit echoes one of the many clichés used to heap praise on the Greek immigrants and portray them in a universally positive light. To be sure, not all diaspora Greeks were daring and some of the gambles they took were foolhardy and backfired. But there are enough examples of bold ventures, innovations, and inventiveness that paid off richly.

Greek America has witnessed a raft of such initiatives ranging from Dr. George Papanikolaou’s laboratory to Tom Carvel’s (Karvelas) soft serve ice cream-making machine and over to George P. Mitchell’s pioneering economic extraction of shale gas.

We hear less and less of these stories now that a big part of Greek America is comfortably ensconced in the middle and upper classes of American society. But Mexico is a new frontier for the few thousands of Greeks who live and work there. One of them is Giannis, the barista and owner of the small coffee shop on Masaryk, which he calls the ‘nobadcoffeeclub’ and is open every day from 8 AM to 7 PM. Giannis, who is from Pyrgos in Peloponnesos, arrived recently in Mexico City, one of several Greeks who chose this unusual destination for emigrants from Greece because of some connection with a friend or a relative. There are another nine coffee shops along or just off Avenida Masaryk, all of them stylish and popular, and they cater to an established and sophisticated coffee culture in Mexico City, the capital of a country that produces coffee grains of the highest quality.

The café scene is legendary, the best known coffee shop is in an 18th-century palace whose entire exterior covered in blue and white tiles while its interior is features mosaics and murals. There a longstanding café culture – “the best atmosphere in Mexico City is in a café” according to the city’s native and award winning author Juan Villoros. There are also ingrained tastes and one of the most popular drinks is the ‘cortado’ a cup with a shot of espresso and an equal amount of steamed milk.

Given all this, one may ask what business does a recently arrived Peloponnesian have in opening the first Greek coffee shop in Mexico City? Giannis’ response to that question encapsulates the brash optimism of the Greek immigrants who believe they can offer something new to the societies in which they have arrived. His ‘nobadcoffeeclub’ has a unique feature because it offers freddo espresso and freddo cappuccino. “I am teaching the Mexicans to drink freddo, cold coffee, just as we do in Greece” he told me. They took a while to get used to it, he admitted, but almost a year since his coffee shop opened, they have come round to loving it. They are also appreciating the home made tsoureki and melomakarona that he recommends as an accompaniment to the coffee.

Giannis, who is in his early thirties, grew up in Greece in the 1990s, when espresso freddo and freddo cappuccino were displacing the legendary Greek frappé, the drink made by adding instant coffee and sugar to cold water and shaking. The frappé made it to the United States for a moment when a Los Angeles reporter covering the Athens Olympics in 2004 liked it so much he published a recipe of how it was prepared. But that was frappé’s last hurrah because back in Greece – the freddos were taking over in a big way. Using espresso beans rather than instant coffee and blending a hot double shot of espresso with ice and sugar in a drink mixer was more appealing to the Greeks. It was an era when the drachma was replaced by the euro and rampant borrowing from abroad was creating a wealthy consumer economy that came come crashing down a decade later. But the espresso and cappuccino freddos survived the economic crisis in Greece, and now Giannis, yet another pioneering diaspora Greek, hopes they find a new home in Mexico City.