In San Francisco Bars, a Cocktail Is Not Just a Drink
Posted by TheShot on 28 Dec 2008 | Tagged as: Barista, Café Society, Consumer Trends
The Travel section of today’s New York Times featured an article on the burgeoning cocktail scene in San Francisco’s bars: Journeys – In San Francisco Bars, a Cocktail Is Not Just a Drink – NYTimes.com. What does any of this have to do with coffee? A bit more than you might think, actually.
The cocktail may no longer capture the sophistication and elegance it once had in the 1940s and 50s, but there are those today who are committed to its comeback. This renewed appreciation for quality cocktails bears a striking resemblance to the more recent public interest in quality coffee.
Of course, the word barista is derived from the Italian word for bartender. And among many high quality cafés in Europe, you’re likely to find great cocktails at the same watering holes where you find great espresso. In America, it’s extremely rare to find them together. But what we do find here is a regional artisan approach to quality drinks.
“The West Coast does liquids well,” the article quotes an SF bar owner. Which is why, as a complement to my wife’s culinary exploits, I only half-jokingly refer to myself as The Beverage Guy of the family. Once while accompanying my wife on a screen test for the PBS cooking show, Joanne Weir’s Cooking Class, Joanne asked me on camera from her Pacific Heights kitchen, “So, Greg, do you like to cook?” To which I replied, “I’m more of a beverage guy” — eliciting audible laughter from the TV crew. Though, for the record, my wife eventually made two appearances on the program — despite my obvious on-screen chemistry with the host.
And while the Bay Area has a rich coffee history, it is no stranger to the history of good cocktails either. Just take the martini, where the article notes Martinez, Calif. as “one of the drink’s putative birthplaces”. “Martinez” being a suitable origin for the drink’s name — explaining why Roberto Cauda, upon visiting us with several kilos of Caffè Mokabar from Torino, Italy, puzzlingly stated, “Why do you call it a martini when it contains absolutely no Martini?!” (i.e., with or without Rossi)
And yet is coffee at its nadir of sophistication?
As coffee lovers, we are encouraged by the parallel, Bay Area interest in elevating the art of the cocktail. But we close with the last words of the article: “It’s so sophisticated.”
Ah, sophistication. Unlike the cocktail renaissance, it is the one thing that, for the most part, is completely lacking from any West Coast espresso-drinking experience. The continued use of taste-altering paper cups, back-alley kiosks lacking any amenities, and the ironically conformist uniform that seems to equate the so-called Third Wave barista with looking like you woke up behind the bar — sleeping in the same clothes, in a pool of your own vomit, following an all-night bender at some of the Bay Area’s “less sophisticated” alcoholic establishments.
Perhaps James Bond isn’t going to your café to order an espresso, but there’s something to be said about the appearance of pride and self-respect in the craft and the role of a barista. And about treating the beverage with respect by serving it in an “adult” cup … and about treating customers with respect by offering them a place to sit, if not also a functional restroom. One can only hope that everything about the experience of drinking good coffee won’t be reduced to the worst common denominators. Could it get any worse?
4 Comments »
on 28 Dec 2008 at 2:39 pm +00:00T 1.Nick said …
Every time I wore a vest and tie to my now-former barista job in Evanston, IL, most of the customers looked at me like I was crazy. A few liked it, but the most common reaction was, “Aren’t you a bit (read: way) overdressed?” I’ve heard of similar reactions in Chicago, too.
It could be that I was in a suburb, that Chicago just does not deal with “fancy” well, or that I was usually the only one dressed like that behind the bar, but reactions like these worry me.
I think it will take a shop that not only does good coffee but also top-notch presentation from the start to break this trend. And table service! Trying to convince new cafe owners to attempt something like this is almost impossible, though; they basically just want to modify the Starbucks counter-service model to something that is palatable and not as fast.
on 28 Dec 2008 at 4:32 pm +00:00T 2.Mark said …
The Negroni – the “espresso” of the cocktail world
There’s heaps of sensory crossovers (not to mention foibles) in the coffee/espresso world and the mixology world.
A lot of Vancouver’s top bartenders (read: the ones who take mixology seriously, from the classics, to how ‘making a balanced cocktail’ works) are also quite interested in coffee, especially espresso, and how that works. I can name five or more of our top bartenders who have sought out training from the likes of Lindsay from 49th, Alistair from Elysian Room (and coffeed.com) and even myself.
on 28 Dec 2008 at 5:07 pm +00:00T 3.mike said …
Interesting that the bartender at Alemibic photographed in the Times article is wearing the same “ironically conformist uniform”, a white t-shirt no less, that you would deplore seeing at Four Barrel.
on 28 Dec 2008 at 5:09 pm +00:00T 4.TheShot said …
@ Nick: Great point about top-notch presentation from start to finish. We keep hearing about how coffee wants to be taken as seriously as wine. And yet many of its best purveyors still have major elements of their delivery chain that act as if they’re slinging Diet Coke from a soda gun.
@ Mark: Count me in as interested in training from that crew! Five years since my last trip to Vancouver, and it’s been far too long.
@ mike: Touché. So much for the sophisticated cocktail hypothesis. Pajama bottoms, T-shirt, and exposed tatts are unfortunately becoming the conformist school uniform for every public service job in town.