Espresso News and Reviews – TheShot.coffeeratings.com

This split café and to-go market is founded by Chef Charlie Ayers, famous for catering for the Grateful Dead (as evidenced by the large wall photo inside) and the initial food operations at Google. This place is his attempt to make his Google cafeteria “public.” It has limited outdoor table and picnic bench seating. Inside [...]

Opening up in the latter half of 2008, this café may serve salads, soups, wine, and even light dinner plates, but don’t let that fool you: this is a serious coffee destination. Which is not surprising, given that Andy Newbom of Barefoot Coffee Roasters personally tipped us off to check this place out. Just a [...]

It may have been a while, but we have reviewed employee espresso bars before. What’s unusual this time is that the espresso bar doesn’t belong to a coffee business. But when said business is slinging shots of Barefoot Coffee Roasters beans out of UNIC Twin machines, we take an interest. The company in question is [...]

Due to a number of reader comments, today’s SF Chronicle published a brief follow-up to a lengthy piece they published last month: Coffee lovers spill the beans on their favorite small-batch roasters. The article mentions SF’s De La Paz Coffee and the East Bay’s Catahoula Coffee Company & Roastery. Once again the emphasis is on [...]

The American Chronicle can be a pretty hokey online rag, but once in a while they feature the occasional gem — like today’s interview with Barefoot Coffee Roasters‘ founder and all around cool guy, Andy Newbom: American Chronicle: Andy Newbom of Silicon Valley – Founder of Barefoot Coffee Roasters. In the interview, Andy reveals how [...]

Today The Oregonian published an interview with David Rittenhouse, who over the past summer started the Portland Oregon Espresso Tasting Society (or P.O.E.T.S.): Opinions flow. And you guessed it, his top tip for people ordering espresso…?: If someone pours you a bad shot, don’t be afraid to ask for another one. Everyone has a flat [...]

Has TheShot been taken over by “splogs” (spam blogs)?! For anyone who has run a blog, I don’t mean the regular stream of bogus insurance adverts and “great post – I had never thought of that” comments. I mean all those splogs out there that have disguised themselves as online “lifestyle magazines” — i.e., shorthand [...]

Today’s The Santa Clara (Santa Clara University‘s undergraduate paper) published a brief piece on the different café “atmosphere” options for coffee drinkers in the area: Finding the coffee shop that’s right for you – Scene. Ah, yes — the old “All coffees are created equal, but how about those curtains?!” trap. (I’m reminded of the [...]

As a former resident of Palo Alto for several years, a trip down Santa Clara’s Stevens Creek Boulevard conjures up images of discount mattress stores, Denny’s, and strip malls as far as the eye can see. Unfortunately, that’s commercial real estate in the Silicon Valley — regardless of the hidden gems tucked away in Northern [...]

The Petaluma Hot List As I mentioned in a previous post, the 2006 Western Regional Barista Competition was held in Petaluma over this past weekend. Twenty-two baristas from across California and Hawai’i participated in the annual competition — many for their first time. In addition to bringing out some of the best espresso preparation the [...]