Coffee Review: Thomas E. Cara Fine Espresso Napoletano
Posted by TheShot on 23 Dec 2008 | Tagged as: Barista, Beans, Local Brew, Roasting
If you love espresso, live in San Francisco, and don’t know who Thomas E. Cara is, well, shame on you. Although Caffè Trieste may be a historical West Coast espresso landmark, Thomas E. Cara goes back a decade further.
Espresso first enchanted Thomas Cara while he was stationed in Italy during WWII. So much so that when he returned home to SF in 1946, he opened an espresso machine business — with the first espresso machine west of the Mississippi River — and it remains operational to this day in Jackson Square. Entering the Thomas E. Cara shop (which is a little like being allowed into a private home/loft), you encounter a combination espresso machine salesroom (largely classic La Pavoni home espresso machines), repair shop, and historical espresso museum. Last week we made the latent discovery that, after 62 years in the business, Thomas E. Cara has long been dabbling in a little retail coffee using a “secret” recipe he also brought back from the war along with his La Pavoni.
Now we have no intention of infringing upon Kenneth Davids’ roasted-coffee rating gig. And we concur with Mark Prince’s assertion that espresso cannot be rated independent of the barista. (Even if we puzzlingly wonder why few bother to look beyond North America when asking if and how espresso should be rated.) But we couldn’t pass up the opportunity to evaluate an expression of espresso from such an “institution” — despite the current vogue of dismissing any contribution to quality espresso that pre-dates the most recent Iraq War.
Available at Sammy’s and no other fine stores…
We’ve mentioned Sam Mogannam, owner of the Mission’s Bi-Rite Market since 1998, in a previous post. Among a number of SF locals who grew up with Mr. Mogannam, Bi-Rite is simply known as “Sammy’s” (as in, “I’m going to Sammy’s to pick up some prosciutto”). We may not have grown up with Sam, but we’re close friends with many who did — so apologies for the informal habit. And from what we’ve learned, Sammy’s is the only retail outlet that carries Thomas E. Cara’s Fine Espresso Napoletano beans other than Cara & Sons’ Jackson Square shop.
Of course, exclusivity does not equal quality. But at a whopping $15.95 a pound — priced up there with neighboring bags of De La Paz and Ritual Coffee Roasters on Sammy’s shelves — expectations have to be elevated somewhat.
Make no mistake: this is an old school coffee. There’s no freshness date posted on the bag (a shame, really). And the roast is decidedly old school, untrendy Southern Italian: a blend, roasted well beyond Full City and even beyond the realm of French Roast charring. (Have all Third Wave zealots run screaming yet?) There’s enough surface oil on the beans to be an aid for combing your hair or putting on lipstick.
We prepped and pulled shots of it using our Gaggia Factory at home. The Gaggia Factory is essentially a mutant La Pavoni Europiccola — and thus should be very familiar target brewing equipment for the likes of Cara & Sons.
The taste test
But as inevitably happens with deep-second-crack roasts, the grinds in our Mazzer Mini came out black, gummy, and seemed to use up a greater volume of beans for an equivalent amount of ground coffee. (This often leaves us with the odd, unscientific impression that dark roasted coffees leave a lot of toxic build-up on our burrs.) But once we eased back on the grind quite a bit and made a few other adjustments, it produced a decent (though not great), dark crema. Even if the operating window of the coffee is not very forgiving, it was still producing a decent crema a week later — leaving us with the impression that the beans weren’t as stale as we had originally feared.
It has an earthy flavor that’s dominated by smoke and some wood. It’s rare these days to come across an espresso so focused on bass-notes (and hence so lacking in the bright note range). And although it’s well suited for milk, without publishing our usual espresso rating routine, it’s not a coffee we can recommend — even if you like that sort of charred, old school, Southern Italian roast. There are roasts just as richly bodied, and at least as fresh, for quite a bit less money out there. But then how often can you taste that kind of SF espresso history?
UPDATE: March 11, 2011
Today’s SFGate opted to publish a piece on Thomas Cara’s espresso machine retailing operations: Family steam powers S.F’s oldest espresso retailer.
9 Comments »
Are you crazy??? Having been on the espresso roast hunt for years, we have tried all of them, I think. Stumptown (excellent when made in Ace Hotel location), ritual, four barrels, blue bottle etc… Thomas Cara is the best espresso. Perhaps it is in those heavy base notes, and not in the trend towards fruity high notes, that we are sold.
Of course we have close seconds – but none compare to Thomas Cara – and if you have ever met Michael…he is a gem.
fondly,
Jacquie
If that’s the profile you’re going for, Jacquie, that makes definite sense.
We’re big defenders of darker roasts and blends here. Not so much as a general preference, but rather because they have been vilified by the coffee trend police — who confuse the fads of the day for something more permanent. (We have an internal pool going for the day that we start seeing articles published on a renewed interest in blends and darker roasts — once the novelty of medium roasts and single origins wears thin.)
And we’ve met Michael. He is great. When I told him I owned a Gaggia mutant of a La Pavoni, he didn’t believe it existed at first until I faxed him the schematics.
I have to echo Jacquie’s comments, and I will.
Are you crazy?
This coffee is far and away the best espresso I have ever tried.
All I can imagine is that “the Shot” had a bad day with the machine. In saying this I am giving the Shot the benefit of the doubt, because I was able to pull a perfect Ristretto shot in a Pavoni Europicolo my first try. It was delicious, deeply flavorful, and yet oddly mild with no bitter after taste. I have literally never had——and certainly never made——a cup of espresso so flavorful, yet so “friendly” to the palette, to coin a phrase.
To be clear about how the coffee was made, I used a burr grinder and ground the beans as fine as the grinder could go without gumming up. I then used a very firm tamp and tamped again with my fist (not too hard, but harder than could be achieved just presssing with my palm) for good measure. I then put the machine on high for a minute, dropping it to low for ten seconds before putting in the stainless filter basket with the coffee. I then lifted the lever as high as it would go and and tapped it slightly several times in the up position, holding it for perhaps 20 seconds until liquid dripped from both spouts for about 5 seconds, then pulled the shot with moderate pressure in about another five seconds delivering perfect liquid and crema (at least to my taste).
I have found that the grind, the tamp and the pull timing can substantially alter the result with any bean, but, again, based on my personal tests of a half dozen different beans since I adopted this method, nothing comes remotely close to Cara’s Napolitano blend.
I haven’t met Thomas, but I have dealt with Christopher on the phone, and he is the best.
I can also recommend the wonderful knock box that Cara’s sells, which was made for their 60th anniversary. At $95, it’s Pricey, but, like the coffee, worth every penny.
Eduardo
I recently made a pilgrimage to Thomas Cara (all the way from New Mexico) to have my beloved Pavoni resuscitated from near death.
As far as I could ascertain Thomas is long since deceased and the business is ran entirely by his son Chris as the other son has pursued other paths.
The shop is a museum, or perhaps in deference to it’s near broadway locale I should describe it as an “espresso porn” lovers wet dream. New and old high end home machines abound. Somehow I was able to hold off my drool, keep my checkbook closed, and discuss coffee with him. In describing his roast he admitted right away that it was very polarizing, either you loved it or you hated it but it was unlikely you’d feel ambiguously about it.
The story from him was that his father had not only learned to love espresso while in Europe for WWII but also procured the recipe for the blend (and roasting characteristics) from an Itallian there, making this blend not only untrendy but downright historic.
Personally I love it. However, much like my love for New Mexico – I don’t know that I would recommend it to anyone unless I knew their taste preferences very well. It is, though, worth trying for any espresso lover – if only for a history lesson in how espresso tasted before the fruity/syrupy/sweet revolution that seems to have taken over the focus of modern coffee snobs.
Thanks for the post, Griffin. While much of the popularized coffee industry is off on its own fads of roasting and flavor profiles, single origins, and now the pour-over arms race, these underappreciated forms of excellent coffee aren’t going away.
And it’s a good thing too. Because these fickle taste fads are sure to come back to much of what’s lately fallen out of favor: there’s a lot there to love.
It’s been many years, but I can’t resist detailing my encounter with Chris Cara. I wandered into the shop maybe 15 years ago and told him that I was curious about his beans. He told me that he had found the recipe among his father’s records and that it was being roasted in Sacramento. My first thought was how absurd it was to think you could duplicate a blend developed many years ago with beans that may or may not resemble the original beans. Then I took a look at the beans and it was obvious that they were charred beyond belief. (And I should add that I prefer a darker, Neapolitan style roast.) I told him I wasn’t interested in buying any beans, but he offered to make me a shot, so I said, “Why not.”
He ground some of the beans, put them in the basket and pulled a watery looking shot. And then he looked at me and said, “Is that enough or would you like another pull?” I was so stunned by this I could hardly speak. I mean he might as well have said, “Do you want this watery, bitter shot or shall I make it even worse by forcing more water through this already spent coffee?”
As I talked more with Chris it became clear that he had never ventured beyond his own small world. He said he had never been to Italy, nor had he heard of any of the serious U.S. roasters I mentioned, including David Schomer.
I hope he’s taken the trouble to look around him and learn a bit about the advances that have been made in espresso roasting and preparation in recent years, but somehow I doubt it.
Chris Cara has always been more on the business side. Thomas Cara and his son John were the ones involved in the technical side of espresso. John Cara seems to have retired some time ago leaving Chris to keep Thos Cara alive.
Personally, I’m grateful Chris Cara has kept the shop going. His father sold me my first lever machine, and John guided me through rebuilding it the first time. The machine has long since been retired; I’m glad the shop has not been.
To Richard Reynolds… Who in the shit gives a damn about Schomer and his “theories”? I have read alot about him as well as alot of what he has written and don’t give him much credit for what he does or has done in the past. Actually he has done no more than the average home barista like it or not. Let him stick the Dolce in his ass.
For a guy who makes some of the best espresso we’ve had in the U.S., even as recently as last year — not to mention all the trial-and-error learning he did to improve espresso in the 1990s — David Schomer is hardly “the average home barista”.
We know the cool kids these days are supposed to pose like drama queens pretending to be iconoclasts, dismissing every bit of quality advancement and learning that came before them as pure rubbish in light of the awe and rapture of pre-infusion and pressure profiling. But even this is a bit much.