Please repeat after me: “Food and drink is entertainment.”

What do I mean by that? Public tastes in entertainment change. We no longer attend social dances or go to the circus. In fact, if someone probably heard their neighbors were doing that, they would hide any of their small children. And instead of seeing the latest Elia Kazan flick or reading the latest Truman Capote novel, we watch Netflix DVDs and play videogames.

While we certainly went to restaurants, drank coffee, and maybe even tried Korean food in the past, back then it was more…functional. But in our popular culture of today, these are primary forms of entertainment. Instead of seeing the latest Tennessee Williams play, we seek out the latest Korean BBQ truck. Today’s shared cultural experiences are as much about retail food and drink establishments as they used to be about music or literature. And coffee today is definitely part of that.

This recently published “syphon-worship” music video illustrates how much entertainment has become inseparable from coffee appreciation today.

Food-as-entertainment-as-food

Food-as-entertainment is heavily reflected in our consumer culture. Not only has the Food Network established a sizeable and lucrative audience, but there’s enough of a feeding frenzy to encourage Bravo and the Travel Channel to join the fray. Not so coincidentally, just as television has swelled on the reality TV fad in response to a writers’ strike and the appeal of lower production costs, retail food and drink is undergoing a similar fad in response to our current economic times.

Take the whole street food thing. We now have fanfare such as the second annual SF Street Food Festival. Now there’s some great food to be had from pushcarts, taco trucks, and bicycles rigged with flamethrowers. But there is a definite entertainment element to it all — the kind that suggests, “This would be tasty in a restaurant, but it’s ten times more fun eating it over an open sewer!”

A couple years ago, and also not by coincidence, we jokingly called coffee’s equivalent to this fad the “Malaysian street food experience“. To the idealist, the theme is about focusing so much on the product that you’re allowed (if not encouraged) to offer as few customer amenities as possible. To the cynic, the theme is about charging the most money for the least amount of investment under the guise of exclusivity. Then throw in the dreaded hipster consumerism label if you will.

Coffee’s Broadway Dreams

As if to continually demonstrate how New York remains years behind on the current coffee culture, just today the New York Times published an article on the stripped down coffee bar theme: The New Coffee Bars – Unplug, Drink Up – NYTimes.com. The article follows a bit more of the idealist’s perspective — with a hint of cynicism suggested only in mentioning New York’s latent Wi-Fi backlash. This theme, already overworked on the Left Coast, is probably a bit too new for New York to pick up on the (*groan*…don’t say it!) irony yet.

Thus it’s probably a bit too telling that today a related post from another New York publication, The Awl, impressed me more: Knock It Off With All The “Pairing,” Okay? – The Awl. Why I appreciated this cynical rant more than the Times piece is probably best summarized by quoting some of it:

The current passion for anything to do with food and drink, cooking, regional cuisine, taco trucks, and so on is fun, and I certainly don’t mean to bag on that. Of course it is great to try, and maybe like, new things, and delicious things. But the fussy, mincing habit of attempting to create demand with a sniffy insistence on things like “artisanal” cheese or soda, coffee brewed in some Japanese contraption for eighteen hours, etc., is manipulative and artificial and stands in opposition to the fun part of sharing good things together.

Their use of “manipulative and artificial” particularly resonated with me. My wife knows a thing or two about food and cooking, and she’s had a tremendously insightful statement about the molecular gastronomy fad of recent years — back when we still wanted to play with our food at restaurants but had the bank accounts to frequent El Bulli. She noted that while the playfulness of its techniques made the food fun and entertaining, to have any lasting qualities the food has to have soul.

Real soul. Not soul-by-numbers. Isley Brothers soul, not Michael Bolton soul. The first time I attended the SF Blues Festival was also the last. Growing up on the South Side of Chicago, I regularly listened to blues singers wailing over how they lost their jobs, their women, and their self-respect. Instead, I shudder to this day thinking about those grassy hillsides of Ft. Mason, suffering through a blues singer’s laments over recycling. Recycling! Sorry, but the “My Curbside Recycling Program Doesn’t Pick Up My #2 Plastics Blues” just rings hollow and oh-so-wrong.

And that’s the problem with a lot of new coffee experiences I’ve had these days. They may have to survive in a world that expects entertainment from their coffee. We’re enthralled and entertained with the latest super-expensive espresso machine, the pour-over method of the month, and the single origin coffee that surprises us by tasting like it comes from the wrong continent. But if the coffee doesn’t have soul — if it’s just going through a checklist of expected stereotypes as a means of fabricating soul — I may as well be in a Starbucks with better coffee.

This is the flagship kiosk of a series of hole-in-the-wall cafés named after Lambretta scooter models (the others being Cento and Special Xtra). There’s even a yellow Lambretta in back with the Cafe Lambretta logo written across its windscreen — a remnant from the owners’ first, and now defunct, café foray. There’s even a Cento scooter hung way up high.

Like its sister locations, it sports heavy Blue Bottle Coffee branding. Unlike its sisters, there’s a bench to sit on (ooh-la-la, how posh is that?), a makeshift sidewalk counter in front to stand at, and a lot of metalwork that went into the store signage — all warmed up by a lone, token fern. It’s these “amenities” that make the Vega location the most comfortable of this chain, but that’s still saying very little.

The more we think about it, the more Vega/Cento/Special Xtra/et al. fits SF’s recent mold of what we’ve called fetishized coffeehouses. Although the Lambretta thing makes for a weak fetish compared to other Bay Area examples, the chain’s theme of glorified lemonade stands definitely targets a kind of coffee shop fetish in format if not theme.

In addition to their Macau iced coffee and teas, the real love here is on the espresso. They also sell Vega-co-branded Blue Bottle beans at the counter — though we noticed that these can sometimes run two-weeks-old after the stamped roast date.

From a three-group La Marzocco Linea, they pull a modest shot with a textured medium and darker brown crema that’s a little on the thin side. It has a dark, semi-potent flavor of herbal pungency, but its flavor profile range is a bit narrow. It’s a guess, but we suspect the bean stocks could be a little fresher for an improvement here. Served in classic brown Nuova Point cups.

Read the review of Vega at Langton.

This is one of the latest in a chain of hole-in-the-wall coffee kiosks from locals Kirk Harper and John Quintos. After Kirk and John got out of operating the defunct 330 Ritch Street nightclub after many years, they took their obsession with Lambretta motor scooters and opened Cafe Lambretta in Nob Hill a few years ago. Cafe Lambretta quickly shut down when they ran into snags licensing food sales, and they since opened a series of coffee kiosks across the city. Each is named after a Lambretta model: Cento, Vega, and the location reviewed here, Special Xtra.

The good news is that all of them serve top-notch espresso. The bad news is that all of them are openly hostile towards customer service in the name of prefabricated exclusivity and aesthetics, operating as glorified lemonade stands in dank city alleyways. While we thought Cento was about as rough as Russian toilet paper when it came to seating options, it’s even worse at Special Xtra: there isn’t even so much as a fire hydrant to sit on, and the only place we found to set down our espresso cup was the green plastic lid of a Sunset Scavenger compost bin from the neighboring loading docks behind 555 Mission St.

We honestly don’t ask for much. We don’t need a ridiculous “third place” adorned with feel-good slogans, racks of merchandising, and a Natalie Merchant soundtrack. All we ask is somewhere to sit other than the gutter — on a block that isn’t known for its heroin deals and condos made of cardboard refrigerator boxes. We’re not even asking for a toilet. But at this rate, we can only guess the next outlet in this chain will require descending a step ladder into the SF sewer system where a broken pipe sprays espresso made from untreated water into your face. Dee-lish. That will be $2. Now go tweet to all your hipster friends.

Seriously: who would have thought that a crime scene lacking any seating or bathrooms would ever become a chain concept? To think we used to make fun of Po’Folks — a “Southern homestyle cooking” restaurant chain located throughout the Southeast — because it had the novel idea of turning poverty into a restaurant concept. We honestly don’t know how Kirk and John get anything done, given that they must spend their waking hours doubled over in laughter at what they can make their customers put up with.

Hold your nose and sip your espresso

But back to the coffee…

With the decaying Transbay Terminal parking lot across Minna St., you’ll know you’ve found it when you see the Blue Bottle Coffee branding and a small line of people standing aimlessly in the middle of a sidewalk.

Using Blue Bottle’s Hayes Valley Espresso blend in a two-group La Marzocco Linea, they pull very short, potent shots with a textured, medium brown crema of good consistency and relative size. The flavor is mostly an earthy pungency, but there’s a good balance between sweetness, some brightness, and richer body earthiness: this is no overwhelming brightness bomb here, and it works quite well. On the other taste extreme, it doesn’t taste like dirt either. Served in classic brown Nuova Point cups.

To pull off getting your customers to willingly participate in their own ridicule, you need a very good product. This place impressively delivers on both counts, and therein lies its genius.

Read the review of Special Xtra.

This dive with barely a service opening sits at the end of an old brick building — still labelled as “Uncle Vito’s Pizzeria” in signage and its black awning. Opening just last month, “Cento” stands for “100″ in Italian — which looks like about the monthly rent that owner John Quintos must be paying for this location.

Cento unfortunately perpetuates the annoying trend requiring espresso lovers to participate in mock heroin deals — i.e., sipping espresso from classic brown Nuova Point cups passed out a back door, standing in an alley of some noxious armpit of town where a body was found the night before. (A.k.a., those conceptual-art-wannabe cafés that keep cropping up.) It may save money and attract the prerequisite hipsters, but it also shows little respect for themselves and their customers.

So yes, it’s the stereotype alleyway — with music playing out into the street and no seating save for a single outdoor bench that straddles a towaway parking zone. However, there is “seating” on a loading dock platform across the street.

The folks here club you over the head with the Blue Bottle Coffee branding — so much so, Cento’s branding takes a back seat to it. It’s also staffed by the prerequisite failed art student doppelgängers (ok, yes, so that one was below the belt), but you can’t knock their good barista skills — and here they have them. While they have paper cups for the odd drink like the New Orleans iced tea, the staff claim they serve “for here”-only espresso (they get it).

Using a three-group La Marzocco Linea, they pull shots with a darker brown crema that is rather thick and rich in consistency — it’s one of the finer examples in the city in this regard. The cup is smooth and has a complex flavor of herbal notes and pungent spices. It has a bit of an odd flavor edge/aftertaste in the middle of the cup, but it runs sweet at the bottom.

So despite our gripes about cookie-cutter squatter camps masquerading as “third wave” hipster coffeehouses, here they make some of the finest espresso in the city. And unlike other recent examples of James Freeman’s expansionist plans, such as the recently reviewed Jackson Place Cafe, they do the Blue Bottle beans justice here: the coffee tastes fresh and the baristas approach their drinks skillfully.

Read the review of Cento.

(More on the sinking state of where good coffee is now being served in SF can be found in the comments below.)

Jeremy Tooker, co-founder of Ritual Roasters, had a bit of a falling out with Ritual’s co-owner, Eileen, and he’s pursued his own vision of a quality coffee business in Four Barrel Coffee: no Wi-Fi, no squatting start-ups that can’t pony up rent, just no-frills retail coffee plus a roasting and distribution operation.

We admire the pursuit of good coffee without all the groan-worthy trappings. Except things have opened early at this location. Real early. There is no storefront café (it’s woefully under construction at the former Ideal Upholstery shop), the hours are semi-random, and the coffee comes from Stumptown (as when Ritual first opened, they plan to open a roasting operation later). They currently sling their coffee out of an open garage door along an unmarked Caledonia St. back alley (save for a “4B” sign), so some ask if it is too early to review Four Barrel Coffee.

Well of course it’s never too early for CoffeeRatings.com. If you serve espresso in SF, we don’t care if you’re some guy named Joe running a cart with a mobile Verismo machine connected by extension cord to the downtown Sherman Clay piano shop. We don’t even care if money exchanges hands.

Money exchanges hands at Four Barrel Coffee, but that’s about as legit as this location gets. As with the Hayes St. Blue Bottle location and echoed in the likes of Trouble Coffee, SF coffee geeks strangely crave the Malaysian street food experience when it comes to their espresso: serve it from a cart in an alley near an open sewer, and somehow your street cred shoots the moon.

Four Barrel Coffee clearly delivers on those criteria. But we have to ask: is it just us, or is it getting harder to enjoy top-notch espresso in SF these days without the odd pretense of feeling like you’re part of some low-budget, ghetto chic conceptual art project? (Here’s a telltale sign: if you have to guess if and what furniture might actually belong to the place, it qualifies.) Their arrangement consists of a simple counter (on wheels, no less) surrounded by stacks of burlap coffee bags and simple, colorful artwork. For seating, there are two randomly placed chairs on a sidewalk across the alley.

Yet for all the ridiculously stripped-down surroundings, they serve espresso from a three-group La Marzocco Mistral — which is like buying a Bentley and driving it in a tractor pull. The last time we encountered a Mistral up close was at the Honolulu Coffee Company in Waikiki four years ago. And even inside the luxurious Sheraton Moana Surfrider Hotel, we had to wonder if the Mistral’s owner went out of his mind with the expense.

Serving an 8-day-old roast of Stumptown’s Hairbender blend (which still runs quite well into 12 days), barista Chris (a former Ritual barista and genuinely friendly guy) performed a lot of deliberate prep work — unburdened by the long lines and crowds common to his previous employer. After pulling the shot, he spent a few moments to tap it down and release some gas even with an 8-day-old roast — rapidly thinning out the crema from an overly bubbly froth to a surprisingly scant medium brown, textured coat.

Flavorwise, the shot is supremely bright: mostly a sharp pungency of spices and some herbal elements, but there are traces of honey, nuts, and even orange peel. Served in classic brown Nuova Point or ACF cups.

Milk-frothing is where things seem to break down a little, however. The microfoam texture and consistency is just better than average, despite the touch of a latte art heart. (This is reflected in the correction score, which is also buffered by a correction for an abnormally soft crema rating.) Because of the low retail sales volume, they even get by with small metal kitchen pitchers that are typically reserved for home use.

Read the review of Four Barrel Coffee.

This espresso bar is a landmark DIY (i.e., Do It Yourself) oddity of San Francisco, making it something of a cultural institution in the short time it’s been in business (since Summer 2007). The closest (inadequate) comparison we can think of is Portland’s surreal Rimsky-Korsakoffee House — a fun house of a coffee place complete with slowly spinning motorized tables, an “underwater” bathroom, and abrasive wait staff armed with squirt guns that we first stumbled into a decade ago.

But whatever Trouble Coffee is, it makes the likes of Ritual Roasters seem button-down corporate by comparison. (Coffee posers/haters of Blue Bottle‘s new upscale digs rejoice.)

Run by the tattooed, oddly accessorized young eccentric, Giulietta (formerly of Athens, GA’s Jittery Joe’s and with connections to SF’s Farley’s Coffeehouse), they serve only coffee, coconut, and toast — each of which are standouts. (She attributes the start of the place to a coconut and a tattoo. Technically, this place is called the “Trouble Coffee and Coconut Club”.)

Otherwise, the tiny space near the beach end of the N Judah line has a “Fellini’s garage sale” theme: rare indie LPs, date signs from 1982, signs requesting customers to not wear masks, etc. In front there are three minichairs camped out on the sidewalk. Inside there’s a wooden counter of planks and a few mismatched stools in a cramped space. And it’s a real hangout for the locals: teens and slackers in particular.

Founded by people with an abundance of skills and energy but little money, their equipment is all hot rod/DIY: the machine, grinder, etc., are all items they assembled from parts. But they use Ecco beans and try to optimize their rotation for serving between 4 and 8 days after roasting.

On our visit, we caught them dipping into their future supply — which meant an espresso made from a three-day-old roast of their single origin Brazilian. The coffee was still gassing out a little and tasted a bit gassy (before enough CO₂ has been released), which was still a little surprising after three days. Even so, it had a rich, textured dark-to-medium brown crema and a rather full flavor for a single bean varietal. With a flavor of pungent (cloves, thyme) goodness.

Giulietta may have been apologetic about the beans being too fresh (we love that concept, btw), but the quality was still there. She also recommended the macchiato for the newer raost: americanos and macchiati are quite popular with the locals. As much an experience, with Giulietta’s great storytelling, as it is great espresso.

Read the review of Trouble Coffee.

Today Blue Bottle Coffee Co. opened up their long-anticipated Mint Plaza café — their first true space (besides kiosks and outdoor carts at the Ferry Building and in the East Bay) to showcase James Freeman’s commitment to freshness.

The café is located at a bend in Jesse St. in the Mint Plaza alleyway — in the corner of the old San Francisco Provident Loan Association building (SF’s largest jewelry-only pawn shop, if that gives you an indication of the neighborhood’s dicey past). It’s a bright space with tall ceilings and tall windows that look out on Jesse and Mint Sts. Along the windows is a series of stools with counter seating. Inside there is limited seating at the siphon bar (more on that below) and one long, high table surrounded by stools.

Of course the emphasis is coffee in all its various forms. But there’s also a worthy dessert menu (Caitlin A. Williams is their pastry chef).

For their “routine” espresso blends ($2), they use a three-group La Marzocco GB/5. As you would expect from Blue Bottle, the barista concentrates on timing a slow and deliberate shot — producing an espresso with a richly textured, medium brown patterned crema. It has a beautiful color in the light of the space, a potent aroma, but a thinner body than you might expect for something of this quality. Still, it has a classically robust Blue Bottle espresso flavor of roasted tobacco with an edge of a sweeter honey. Served in a classic brown Nuova Point cup with a glass of water on the side.

Single Origin Espresso

Of course, as a showcase for Blue Bottle Coffee, this is just the beginning of the coffee experience here. James has established a weekly rotation of single origin espresso shots, served from a dedicated old copper, manual, two-group La San Marco machine. Today’s special single origin roast was a Brazilian Camocim Bourbon. Producing one of the very best, if not the best, blended espresso in town, Blue Bottle’s single origin Camocim Bourbon will knock your socks off and comes highly recommended at $3. (James apparently knows me too well, as he personally served me up one before I even had the chance to ask!)

It has an exquisite aroma. The crema is a rich, mottled, and frothy medium brown — a touch thinner in size, as you might expect from a single origin espresso, but it has texture for miles. It has a robust flavor — there aren’t any elements noticeably missing, which is common to single origin espressos — and tastes of chocolate and some tobacco smokiness. Served in a white ACF cup — it is an outstanding recommendation over the “standard” blend.

Siphon Bar

For this café’s opening day, the siphon bar earned Blue Bottle a front-page story on the “Dining In” section of the day’s New York Times. And the place buzzed with the feel of a grand opening. James was beaming over his latest pride and joy, cameras were about still taking photographs of the place and its coffee, and many of the local coffeescenti came by to welcome the place (including Eileen Hassi of Ritual Coffee Roasters while I was there).

So what is this “siphon bar”? For one, it’s not necessarily anything radically new or different. It is essentially vacuum pot coffee made with a special system imported from Japan, except it uses halogen lamps as a heat source and cotton cloth filters that James told me should last a whole year. (Cafe Bello, for example, has offered vacuum pot brewed coffee for the past four years — even though it’s no longer listed on their main café menu.) The New York Times may have gone ga-ga over their fixation with its price tag — which they quoted as $20,000 for the setup — but James dismissed some of that figure on many of the peripheral parts they purchased, training, etc.

However, the siphon bar presents a unique way to experience some of Blue Bottle’s most exquisite coffees. They offered three different bean options. I had their Idido Misty Valley Ethiopian ($10) — which comes accompanied with chocolate sea salt caramels. The pairing may sound a bit pretentious (I’m leery whenever coffee people try to shoehorn familiar wine tasting rituals on themselves), but it works quite well — enhancing both the flavors of the delicate, clean coffee and the richer chocolate and caramel. In any case, the café could barely keep up with the novelty demand for their siphon bar coffee.

James Freeman may have made his start in the East Bay, but as a resident north of the Panhandle, he has made this location a showpiece and a true coffee destination for the city. Some Blue Bottle loyalists might piss and moan because “Blue Bottle was way cooler when you could drink espresso shots made by a tattooed slacker over a sewer cover in a back alley,” but we’ll take good coffee over misplaced adolescent attitude and poser angst any day.

Read the review of Blue Bottle Cafe at Mint Plaza. — with ratings based on their standard espresso blend.