We’d apologize for the lack of postings this past month, but that’s partly the result of good editing. The trouble is that we typically board up our windows and hide from most coffee blogs this time of year, as most become inundated by insipid annual round-ups of coffee gift ideas to help cash in on the season.

Not that we’re into role playing a disgruntled Scrooge McCafé for the holidays. We love coffee. But loving coffee and willingly wading through endless coffee advertisements, Clockwork-Orange-style, are two entirely different things.

However, like the trusty annual newspaper article on how different cultures around the world celebrate Christmas, one recent exception caught our eyes. It’s an article on how different cultures around the world like their coffee: A Caffeine Addict’s Guide to the World | Travel Deals, Travel Tips, Vacation Ideas | Budget Travel. Argentina, Spain, Austria, Mexico, Ethiopia, Saudi Arabia, Finland, Japan… each location comes with a description of a unique local coffee experience, a tip for trying it, and a suggested place for it. Plus a slideshow to boot.

But before we forget: a public service message to all wannabe coffee journalists out there. Please don’t make the hackneyed, lazy, and bogus equality between coffee and caffeine. One of the most offensive things a journalist can do to insult a coffee lover is to equate them to a “caffeine addict”. We’ve always felt this is the equivalent of calling wine lovers “alcoholics”.

So, please… just don’t. It’s insulting, it’s unimaginative, and it’s been beaten to death. It makes you sound like some overly perky, bubble-gum-chewing dolt writing for the high school newspaper. And we promise we won’t be offended by the term “coffee lovers”.

We used to write more regularly about the steady stream of meaningless, unscientific coffee polls that frequently fill the pages of magazines, newspapers, and Web sites. We got tired of writing incessant rants about how the polls were poorly constructed and lacked any stated criteria nor methodology, and most assuredly you all certainly tired of reading them. What’s different this time — with Travel + Leisure magazine’s recent “America’s Favorite Cities” poll — is that they’ve provided just enough data for us to reexamine and draw some different conclusions.

You may recall Travel + Leisure‘s America’s Best Coffee Cities poll earlier this year. The magazine also conducts an annual reader poll to appeal to the insatiable human appetite for what is essentially a city-by-city dick measuring contest. Coffee is one of their polls’ rated subjects, and Seattle couldn’t wait three hours yesterday before bragging about their measurements.

However, that’s not the interesting part of this story. Although it may be just another popularity contest, Travel + Leisure not only compiled numeric polling scores for each city, but they also segmented the scoring between “residents” and “visitors“. Our idea was to simply compare a city’s score between the two audiences and rank cities along those lines. We call it, “Which U.S. cities are the most delusional about the quality of their local coffee?”

Coffee Cities Most Overrated by the Locals

The winner of this dubious honor, by a significant margin, was Anchorage, Alaska. There visitors ranked the town’s coffee nearly two-thirds of a point lower, on a five-point scale, than what residents rated it. At the other end of the spectrum, Miami clearly ranked tops in the “locals just don’t appreciate you enough” category. Perhaps all those Cuban expats still believe that the coffee tastes that much better in their former homeland, and yet the tourists wonder why they are complaining.

San Francisco ranked in the middle of the pack at 17th out of 35 cities for most overrated by the locals. However, the most telling figure was that 28 of 35 cities were rated lower by tourists than by the locals. Just look at all the red in the right-most column in the table below.

Of course, local residents should know best where to get the good coffee. Meanwhile, tourists often either have no clue, play it safe by frequenting only the bland-but-recognizable coffee chains, or never venture into the good coffee neighborhoods. For example: when is the last time any of our SF resident readers actually visited Fisherman’s Wharf? And do you realize how bad the coffee is there?

Another major pattern in the data is — with the exception of Anchorage and Portland, ME at the very bottom — much of the American South got General-Sherman-style ravaged by their tourist scores, suggesting that tourists think the locals are a bit full of themselves. In any case, here are the numbers…from the most underrated by the locals to the most overrated:

Coffee Cities Most Underrated by Locals?

Rank	City	Visitor Rank	Visitor Score	Resident Rank	Resident Score	Vis – Res Rank	Vis – Res Score
1.	Miami	27	3.73	32	3.55	-5	+0.18
2.	Washington, D.C.	19	3.94	29	3.83	-10	+0.11
3.	San Antonio	29	3.58	34	3.5	-5	+0.08
4.	Denver	6	4.33	13	4.26	-7	+0.07
5.	Chicago	15	4.04	21	4.01	-6	+0.03
6.	Boston	17	4.02	22	3.99	-5	+0.03
7.	Providence, RI	4	4.52	6	4.52	-2	+0.00
8.	New York City	5	4.34	11	4.37	-6	-0.03
9.	Portland, OR	2	4.77	6	4.85	+0	-0.08
10.	Honolulu, HI	26	3.77	27	3.86	-1	-0.09
11.	Seattle	1	4.82	1	4.92	+0	-0.10
12.	Atlanta	24	3.82	24	3.92	+0	-0.10
13.	San Diego	12	4.07	18	4.18	-6	-0.11
14.	Philadelphia	25	3.79	25	3.92	+0	-0.13
15.	Minneapolis/St. Paul	10	4.18	12	4.32	-2	-0.14
16.	San Juan, P.R.	14	4.05	17	4.19	-3	-0.14
17.	Las Vegas	32	3.44	31	3.59	+1	-0.15
18.	Savannah, GA	7	4.25	10	4.41	-3	-0.16
19.	San Francisco	3	4.53	3	4.70	+0	-0.17
20.	Phoenix/Scottsdale	21	3.88	20	4.06	+1	-0.18
21.	Kansas City	28	3.71	26	3.90	+2	-0.19
22.	Charleston, SC	13	4.06	14	4.26	-1	-0.20
23.	Los Angeles	20	3.91	19	4.13	+1	-0.22
24.	Dallas/Fort Worth	34	3.32	33	3.54	+1	-0.22
25.	New Orleans	8	4.24	7	4.47	+1	-0.23
26.	Austin, TX	9	4.20	8	4.43	+1	-0.23
27.	Orlando, FL	33	3.44	30	3.71	+3	-0.27
28.	Baltimore	31	3.53	28	3.85	+3	-0.32
29.	Memphis, TN	35	3.15	35	3.47	+0	-0.32
30.	Nashville, TN	16	4.03	9	4.42	+7	-0.39
31.	Salt Lake City	30	3.54	23	3.93	+7	-0.39
32.	Santa Fe, NM	22	3.85	15	4.26	+7	-0.41
33.	Houston	23	3.83	16	4.25	+7	-0.42
34.	Portland, ME	11	4.14	4	4.60	+7	-0.46
35.	Anchorage	18	3.95	5	4.55	+13	-0.60

]]> http://theshot.coffeeratings.com/2011/09/travel-leisure-coffee-poll/feed/ 0 http://theshot.coffeeratings.com/2011/07/stumptown-downtown-portland/ http://theshot.coffeeratings.com/2011/07/stumptown-downtown-portland/#comments Fri, 29 Jul 2011 19:38:28 +0000 TheShot http://theshot.coffeeratings.com/?p=7739

Shockingly, it’s taken us this long to make it to Portland, Oregon — considered by many to be ground zero (no café name pun intended) of American coffee culture. And if you’re going to start sampling the offerings in Portland, it only makes sense that you start with the legendary Stumptown Coffee Roasters. This despite that a number of Portland locals might suggest that other, newer, smaller coffee vendors in the area have taken what Stumptown started and have since overtaken them.

Lucky for us, I arrived yesterday on what was informally called “the first day of summer” in Portland: the weather was warm, the skies were clear, and in the north I could even see the rounded dome of Mount St. Helens in the distance over some of the treelines (something, I was told, Portlanders get to see maybe once a year). The downtown Stumptown was easy to spot once you found the Great-Depression-era-like breadlines that wound around the sidewalk and lead up to the nearby Voodoo Doughnut — which is apparently Portlandese for “crack cocaine” among international tourists.

The lines at this Stumptown Coffee Roasters may not have been that ridiculous, but they hold their own — even if they manage to remain inside the building. They have a couple of small sidewalk tables outside and a cavernous space inside, which includes several tables and benches along the long wall, a magazine rack, limited front window counter stool seating, a rack of coffee and accessories, and a long coffee bar. Plus a Technics turntable at the back for DJ’ing, because that’s what you do in Northwest coffeehouses, plus rear bathrooms covered in graffiti.

All sorts of Portland locals and visitors line up here: from the wandering tourist to hipsters in bright orange or pink pants. It’s odd to see a Mistral machine set off to the side and neglected here, as if it were a 1984 Chevy Impala. But that’s what happens when you install a new, three-group La Marzocco La Strada machine. Behind the service area there’s a brick wall with a large mirror to show off what happens behind the La Strada — plus some stool seating off to the side of the machine.

They offer several single cup Chemex variations. As for their espresso, they pull shots with an even, hybrid crema of darker and lighter brown that suggests some unevenness in the draw. The resulting cup is potent and has a semi-syrupy body, with a good deal of brightness that doesn’t go over the top (as you might expect for Hairbender at times). Flavorwise, it has something of a peppery edge over a kind of allspice/nutmeg spice profile and a semi-creamy mouthfeel. Served in a brown logo ACF cup.

A solid espresso, but as with other Stumptowns we’ve visited, hardly ranking among our favorites in North America. In fact, 26 places in San Francisco scored higher than this Stumptown on espresso score. The fuss does not seem generally justified, and the aforementioned locals seem to be onto something. (Which also kind of says something else, given New Yorkers’ infatuation with Stumptown.)

We also have another example where espresso machine technology has been modernized with heavy investments, with results that suggest the benefits are only for baristas and not for espresso consumers.

Read the review of Stumptown Coffee Roasters in Downtown Portland, Oregon.

The New York Times published an article this week (due in the NY Times Magazine tomorrow) from its coffee beat regular, Oliver Strand: Japan’s Pour-Over Coffee Wins Converts – NYTimes.com. It’s a relatively effective trend piece — dealing more with pop culture and a sort of social anthropology than anything it says about coffee. But coffee’s story over the past decade is primarily about an evolution of pop culture rather than any evolution in coffee itself.

The article introduces the notion of national coffee cultures and how Japan has finally earned some long overdue recognition. Giving credit to Japan’s long history of quality coffee is a refreshing change from the usual mainstream media take, as coffee reporting is rife with historical revisionism.

Just last week, the San Jose Mercury News reported that “there’s a new DIY trend afoot in the world of coffee lovers … they’re roasting their own coffee beans — at home.” This despite a good decade of noticeable decline in activity on home roasting newsgroups, online forums, and mailing lists — in response to the increasing consumer availability of high quality, fresh-roasted, date-stamped coffees.

Pour-over coffee is new if it’s new to you

But while Mr. Strand does a great job in recognizing that Japanese quality coffee culture wasn’t born yesterday, he isn’t nearly as successful with doing the same for the very old, very un-trendy practice of pour-over coffee brewing. To quote his article:

“…Cooking isn’t stuck in 1990, or we would still be sitting down to menus with honey-mustard glaze and sun-dried tomatoes. Why should coffee be any different? ”

And yet the article goes on to discuss pour-over coffee. Except that pour-over is a holdover from the 1990s, with coffee shops such as Oakland’s Cole Coffee (née Royal Coffee) and Monterey’s Plumes offering handmade, individual serving pour-over coffee since the halcyon days of car phone antennas and rollerblading along the Embarcadero. Long before Phil Jabar, of Philz Coffee fame, even thought about coffee.

But even 1990 doesn’t go far back enough. Monmouth Coffee in London has been offering individual pour-over coffee since 1978 — the days of the very fondue sets that Mr. Strand mentions in his article. And yet we have food blog posts announcing those “high-tech Chemex brewers” that were actually invented in the 1930s, and the original Melitta pour-over filter design was patented around the last time the Chicago Cubs won a World Series (1908).

Is it any wonder why we roll our eyes whenever someone brings up the popular (and misused) form of the “Third Wave” tag — as if nobody had thought of making quality coffee until they just invented it three years ago? Even the Japanese Hario dripper kettle Mr. Strand cites in the article represents a simple modification of the hot water pot — i.e., hardly something revolutionary. Consumer toaster manufacturers change their designs every couple of years, introducing new features like bagel settings, and yet nobody speaks of toast experiencing a “Third Wave” or radical quality revolution.

Understanding the need for (perceived) speed

Which all makes us wonder why coffee has a tendency to put a new coat of paint on the Vatican and tell us it’s new and revolutionary architecture. Perhaps we all innately need to believe that we live in accelerated and interesting times to get us out of bed in the morning. A cultural environment that promotes a kind of faux anxiety is probably good for jobs, good for product marketing, good for filling conference seats, and even good for book authors, newspaper columnists, and, well, blog posters.

However you look at it, hand-pour coffee is old. Japanese coffee culture is even older. But the Western recognition of and appreciation for pour-over coffee and Japanese coffee culture is definitely new. Or at least new to enough of us to warrant a worthy trend piece in the Times.

Tomorrow’s Wall Street Journal features an article on the Lisbon espresso, the bica: The Best Cafes in Lisbon – WSJ.com. It touches on Lisboeta coffee culture — e.g., drinking many shots each day at the local pasteleria (a sort of pastry shop/bar); a dependence on slower roasts, good quality coffee from Brazil, but also a proportion of robusta from former African colonies; and 40ml espresso shots instead of the Italian standard of 20ml (something we never saw as a positive, btw).

The article’s title is something of a misnomer, as it overlooks some of the best and most notable cafés in town. In part, this is due to the article’s focus on Delta Cafés coffee. Cafés such as Pastéis de Belém and A Brasileira are mentioned. But then again, our definition of quintessential Portuguese/Lisbon experiences includes headbanging to Da Weasel in Praça do Comércio whereas it probably doesn’t rank with the Journal.

As 2010 heads towards a close, we reflect on some of the more interesting coffee bars we’ve stumbled across for the first time in the past year. Cape Town’s Origin Coffee Roasting is clearly a new global favorite. Closer to home, the opening of Ma’velous promises a new evolutionary direction for the coffee bar. But oddly one of the most memorable coffee bars we visited in the past year, and one we had yet to write a Trip Report for, was Moby Dick II on the island of Pico in the Portuguese Azores.

First, a little background. The theme gimmick coffee bar is old hat. But the Moby Dick II, easily one of the most unique cafés you will ever encounter, works it on another level. This has to do with its sense of place.

Of whales and coffee bars

Since the 1980s, the local economy of this small island of Pico may have successfully made the shift from open-boat whaling to whale watching. Yet the place remains respectfully steeped in the legacy of whaling culture — a balancing act that isn’t necessarily easy, given the revisionist temptations rooted in the modern “save the whales” ethos. Pico boasts whaling museums and former whale-processing plants that still carry a lingering smell of what was once the horrible stench of the whaling industry.

It’s easy to overlook the critical, albeit momentary, importance of whaling in world history. At its mid-1800s peak, Nantucket, MA was the Silicon Valley of its era — flush with big money, speculative investors, gargantuan risk-taking, state-of-the-art technology, and workers eager to earn their share of the spoils by living in the extreme. The whaling ships of the time were the grandfathers of space exploration. The worldwide commercial nature of the whaling industry also marked the birth of modern globalization. It is within this context that you have to appreciate one of the greatest works of American literature, Herman Melville’s Moby Dick. (Our visit to Pico made us reread the novel for the first time since high school, which we enjoyed a lot more this time around.)

As reflected in the novel, the Portuguese Azores were a favorite port of call for the Nantucket whalers in the early stages of their global quests. Provisions were cheaper on the islands than in New England (early shades of Wal-Mart buying cheaper goods from China). The local population of the Azores also provided a healthy supply of ready and capable whalers. And nowhere in the Azores has whaling meant more than on Pico island and, in specific, the small town of Lajes do Pico.

Moby Dick II — not the sequel

This is a seriously heavy thematic backdrop for what is a whimsical art project and coffee bar. But with its location on the seaside esplanada of Lajes do Pico, the Moby Dick II café fits thematically better with its place than any other gimmick coffee spot we’ve experienced prior.

This coffee bar is really a service kiosk made out of a mini Airstream-like trailer decorated to look curiously like a sperm whale — from the eyes to the skin and down to the whale tail that suspends above it. The side of the whale opens out onto the street corner with a number of chairs and tables under parasols at a wooden deck, illuminated by fluorescent lights at night, overlooking the ocean and the harbor.

Here they play modern music and employ younger baristas. Given the general lack of signage, you wouldn’t know the name of the place if not for the staff T-shirts. This is sidewalk café offers some of the best views in town while keeping the locals happy with a rather full bar (including a wide assortment of Portuguese liqueurs), made-to-order sandwiches and light edibles, and as almost required by Portuguese law: espresso.

Inside the whale by the register is a two-group Fiamma machine. They use the Azores-ubiquitous Sical beans, and with their Fiamma they produce shots with a good layer of even, medium brown crema with a smoothness and pepper and mild spice flavor. Served in BonVida cups with Sical branding for a mere €0.50.

It’s far from the best espresso you’ve ever had. And while it’s almost as hard to find an outstanding espresso in the Azores as it is to find a poor one, this is one of the more memorable options of the lot on its quality merits alone.

Read the review of Moby Dick II in Lajes do Pico in the Azores.

Today’s post comes directly from the Friday Comic Relief Department. Because we enjoy sarcastic humor, and are frequently guilty of it ourselves, we bring you: The Five Types of Morning Coffee Crazies (And How to %#$@ with Them) | Points in Case. (Title edited for vulgarity.) A rather comic rant on some of the obsessive-compulsive types that might frequent your local café: the Polite Coward, the Perfectionist, the Trashy One, the Camper, the Freak. Plus a few rather odd coffee shop caricatures and a little torching of the Panera Bread chain.

A fair bit of warning: expect vulgarity. We’ve censored it out a little here in the title, as it’s not for everybody first thing in the morning. But some of us are okay with that sort of thing. Hey, it beats watching stand-up comedians on Comedy Central speaking half-English, half-bleep.

Another bit of warning: college humor. Just those two words on the Web make us collect air sickness bags on flights the way some people collect hotel soaps. While 99% of it fits the retarded category — and we mean that in a Rahm-Emanuel-sort-of-way — there are occasionally redeeming examples of the genre. Monty Python had its moments, after all.

This past year, The Atlantic magazine has been no stranger to the subject of coffee. They finish out the year on the topic of coffee tourists: Coffee Worth Traveling For – The Atlantic Food Channel.

We’ve always used the phrase coffee tourist in a much more derogatory context — e.g., “kopi luwak is a gag novelty for the coffee tourist who cannot tell the difference between price and quality”. However, here The Atlantic uses it to describe those who travel the world in search of superior coffee shops in addition to those who seek out coffee growers “at origin”.

By this definition, we’re guilty as charged of course. But this reflects another failure in coffee’s ever-popular wine analogy: nobody needs to hop on an airplane just to sample some the finest Burgundy wines.

Not to be confused with Cento, which is decidedly at the opposite end of the amenity scale, this is a classically pretty café at the rear entrance of the elegant Fairmont Hotel. It caters primarily to hotel tourists — many of whom come from around the globe and get a little homesick for something other than a McStarbucks.

The location overlooks the cable cars intersecting at California & Powell Sts., and there is limited outdoor sidewalk seating at café tables against the building. The café itself seems closely modeled after many of the thematic and modern Illy-branded cafés of Italy: modern red light fixtures over café tables, a polished décor, Italian music, and wait staff with accents.

The tourists seem to go for the “authenticity” here — even if the espresso doesn’t come close to matching what you can get from an Illy café in Italy. They serve the usual Italian-themed light lunch fare, and there’s a merchandising wall of Illy and Ghirardelli products so tourists can return bearing gifts. One nice touch is an old school, decorative brass Gaggia espresso machine on display at the hotel entrance, just inside the hotel hallway leading from the café.

Using a sparkling and shiny, Illy-branded two-group La Cimbali machine, they pull shots of espresso from the giant sealed Illy cans. It’s the typical North American Illy flavor: soft, meek and based on mild pepper and spice. However, it does lack some of the woodiness you often find in Illy. It has a thin layer of lighter brown crema and is served in Illy designer IPA cups with no saucer. All the things you expect from a North American Illy shot, including all the things you expect it to be lacking.

Read the review of Caffè Cento.

An Op-Ed piece in Monday’s Washington Post noted the curious phenomenon of local culture that is exported, reinterpreted abroad, and then imported back again. The article’s topic was the wildly received recent openings of Starbucks cafés in cities such as Warsaw and Prague — with the backdrop of their centuries-old coffeehouse culture traditions: Anne Applebaum – A Starbucks State of Mind – washingtonpost.com.

We’ve witnessed this phenomenon before with the all-American burger joint/diner. A little over a decade ago, these establishments rose in popularity as a cultural export within a number of Southeast Asian cities, such as Taipei, Singapore, and Hong Kong. Several years later, imported versions of these Asian-flavored burger joints showed up in Southern California. (You could always tell when curry powder, pickled cucumbers, and vinegar made their way into the menu.) So why would Starbucks be greeted like coffeehouse “liberators” in Eastern Europe — while many Westerners now view the brand as an overpriced, jumped-the-shark, frivolous luxury that diluted its quality in pursuit of industrialized mass production?

The article’s author notes that the stylish Eastern European cafés of the 19th century served as island respites from dreary conditions at home and an opportunity to aspire to the comforts of the upper classes. Today, after the European café of old was exported to Seattle and transformed into a culture of vapid Sting CDs and gargantuan milkshakes sloshed into to-go paper cups, Starbucks arrival in cities such as Warsaw and Prague once again represents the opportunity to aspire to the world’s upwardly mobile classes in the shadow of Communism’s collapse.

1995: Seattle First Invades Prague

The author also makes mention of Eastern Europe’s preceding decade of Starbucks knock-offs, which reminded me of when I visited Prague in 1995. Back then, Prague was in the throes of its post-Communism reconstruction and remodeling phase. A layer of dust covered the city, and it seemed like PVC pipe was sold on every corner. (I remember remarking at the time how I could have made a killing opening a Home Depot chain there.)

I quickly became a regular at a coffee shop in the historic Staré Město district called Pražská Káva — or, quite simply, “Prague Coffee” — located at U-Zlatého-hada (or “at the golden snake” in Prague’s historic addressing system, and today on a street named Karlova, just across the Charles Bridge). They boasted “Seattle style lattes.” While Starbucks was still largely an unknown there in 1995, the Western appeal for “Seattle style” coffee beverages was clear to anyone who collected money from American tourists. Having been in Seattle just a few months prior, I was actually quite surprised how well Pražská Káva’s lattes measured up to their Seattle counterparts — and how you could get a good espresso in town for only about 20-25 Kč (about $1 U.S. at today’s exchange rates).

Oddly, that was probably the first café I ever gravitated towards just for the quality of their espresso. Although I found the espresso quality around Prague to be generally quite decent at the time, I also suffered my worst coffee experience ever in Prague — a styrofoam cup of traditional Czech “coffee” purchased at the Vyšehrad castle, which I can only describe as grainy sawdust suspended in hot water.

Sadly, Pražská Káva was replaced years ago by a hotel and restaurant. We suspect that today’s infiltration of Starbucks there will do more to lower the imported “Seattle style” standards that Pražská Káva once held.