Trip Report: 54 Mint
Posted by TheShot on 21 Aug 2009 | Tagged as: Local Brew, Restaurant Coffee
In the Mint Plaza, right across the Blue Bottle Cafe mothership, this café provides some pretty good outdoor dining options — albeit without much shade on sunny days. There’s also a but of limited indoor seating upstairs and a homier cellar below.
Alberto Avalle, a founder of New York’s Il Buco, partnered with others to open this Italian spot in SF — which emphasizes authenticity over more of the highfalutin fare back in NY. And here they get the authentic bit down to the prosciutti and salami hanging in the rustic cellar below. They hired a Sicilian chef, and it shows in the menu — but less so in the coffee (i.e., no Miscela d’Oro).
Using a two-group Elektra machine at the bar and Caffè Umbria beans, they pull generous espresso shots with a bare, thin layer of medium brown crema. The cup still has a substantive mouthfeel and aroma, although the flavor is skewed heavily towards more of the over-roasted end of the spectrum: toasted wood, resins, and pepper. Served in decorative OperaNova cups by a sparse staff you have to gang-tackle to get their attention.
Some local publications think the espresso here is “excellent”, but we’ll have to stop at “not bad”.
Read the review of 54 Mint.
2 Comments »
on 23 Aug 2009 at 10:39 pm +00:00T 1.Vanessa said …
Wow, when I was there I probably had the worst espresso ever! I am glad they’re getting better!
on 24 Aug 2009 at 11:23 am +00:00T 2.TheShot said …
Given some of the horrors we have endured over the past six years, we no longer use the words “worst espresso ever” lightly.