Pardon the sensationalist headline. (Like nobody has ever done that before.) But here’s something from yesterday’s L.A. Weekly on Demitasse, one of the more anticipated new coffeeshops in the L.A. area, that questions/provokes some of the conventional coffee wisdom of the month: Demitasse Will Not Have Pourover Coffee + Other Twists on the Third Wave Coffee Shop – Los Angeles Restaurants and Dining – Squid Ink.

So what’s different here? Anticipated “Third Wave” (ugh) coffeeshop openings have been fodder for the local presses for several years now, so it only makes sense that each might attempt to differentiate themselves from the hoard with a slightly different angle now and then. But what we have with Demitasse is yet another coffeeshop identifying itself (at least in the article) more by what it doesn’t do than by what it does do. And what it doesn’t do is pour-over coffee.

Or does it? Per the article, clearly they’re fans of the Clever full-immersion coffee dripper — which some circles might say isn’t pour-over coffee by only a slight technicality. But the reason the owner, Bobak Roshan, gives for not offering pour-over coffee is telling: “Roshan adamantly is against the method as far too dependent on the skills and utmost attention of the barista, too often to the detriment of the coffee drinker looking to have the cleanest, tastiest cup possible.”

There you have it. The method requires too much concentrated attention, for too long, of an easily distracted barista in a retail environment. There is some truth to this, even suggesting a bit of retail reality folly in the nascent Brewers Cup. Of the few coffeeshops that have offered vac pot coffee over the years, most would only do so after the morning caffeine rush-hour. And yet vac pot brewing requires much less constant attention than pour-over brewing. And then there’s the reality that the biggest expense in retail coffee is labor.

Which isn’t to say that pour-over brewing is going away anytime soon. Despite the many efforts to convince us otherwise, retail pour-over brewing has been around for decades. However, this might suggest that many coffeeshops are starting to learn the dismissed conventional wisdom behind the once-novel-now-passé Clover brewer: that individually hand-crafted, manual brewing processes make a great cup of coffee, but they fail to scale in a retail environment supporting any kind of volume at a competitive price.

Now if only we understood the semi-conventional wisdom behind using Equator Estate Coffees — despite only a single notable retail example of it in the face of dozens of underachievers.

Let’s hear it for counter-programming. Starbucks made good on last year’s Plenta threat this week, announcing a new beverage size that targets the gluttony market, called the Trenta. As in Godzilla vs. the Trenta. Taking advantage of a news lull, Starbucks’ press onslaught has the media lapping it up. So naturally, we’re going to talk about the return of Citizen Cake.

This is the long-awaited revival of Elizabeth Falkner’s since-defunct Hayes Valley original namesake shop. Opening in November 2010 on the spot of the former Vivande Porta Via, it’s decorated with a lot of black-painted wood with red highlights. Inside there’s a bar with stool seating and a number of black wooden tables and booths for more formal dining. However, the pastries are, not surprisingly, showcased in front.

The staff here are, well, rather quirky — even by SF standards. They operate a rather restaurant-pedestrian UNIC Phoenix Twin behind the bar to pull shots of Equator Estate Coffee. We’ve long been ambivalent about Equator Estate coffees served in a retail environment; the lack of quality controls at the customer delivery end have produced an inordinate amount of underwhelming cups, given their industry regard. But in this restaurant-like environment, it’s surprisingly decent — though not great.

The resulting shots have a thinner but healthy-looking darker brown crema. It has a limited body and not much sweetness, despite its rather short two-sip serving size. With a darker, heartier herbal flavor of cloves, there is limited brightness in the shot. Served in classic brown ACF cups.

The milk frothing here is dodgy at best, and they also offer coffee in metal French presses. But at least unlike their former Citizen Cupcake location, they’re not hinging their business on the health of a record store.

Read the review of Citizen Cake.

This industrial art space café opened in late 2009 and is easy to miss — despite its size and being across the street from AT&T Park. There are a few French café tables among the front patio and also inside, but inside it is primarily a large art space with white walls and a number of pieces of various media, including lawn chairs on a real patch of lawn.

At the center of the airy space is a coffee bar that doesn’t mess with food items: the focus here is on the coffee. They use a two-group Laranzato ME-2, which is the only one we’ve seen outside of the Big Island of Hawaii. There are also a number of plastic Clever drippers from Sweet Maria’s and a number of Pelligrino bottles lining the long serving countertops.

The SF Weekly highlighted the introduction of these Clever drippers earlier this month — as they now are available for retail coffee use in SF beyond Four Barrel Coffee. The SFoodie crew at SF Weekly were also quick to anoint them as a “Third Wave coffee shop” in the article’s first sentence, but that (meaningless) claim rings hollow when paper cups are the only option available. To us, this is akin to comparing a restaurant to a James Beard Award winner while it only serves on paper plates.

But let’s forget the coffee toy du jour for a moment: of course, our reviews focus on the espresso.

They proudly feature coffee from Equator Coffees & Teas, which we’ve long been ambivalent about — particularly in a retail environment. Equator receives tremendous accolades as a roaster, but virtually all of the cafés they supply produce decent but ultimately forgettable results. Here they used Equator’s Arabian Mocha Java blend for espresso, but they also featured an organic Brazil Chapada Diamantina, a Colombia La Josefina, and a Costa Rica Montes de Oro (for the Clever drippers).

They pull espresso as sizable shots served in larger, drip-coffee-sized paper cups (unfortunately). It has a healthy looking, mottled, medium brown crema of average thickness and a flavor of a light tobacco smokiness. There are some herbal notes and pleasant spices in the mix, but the shot has a somewhat narrow flavor profile.

The crowds are light and the art space makes for an interesting place to linger over a coffee. And the coffee itself is pretty good — just again not the place to showcase Equator beans. But then that isn’t surprising for Equator coffee in a retail environment.

Read the review of Sohberts.

San Rafael-based Equator Estate Coffees has long been a major enigma for us. They have heavy distribution among high-end restaurants in town — and quite a few on the low-end. But despite the occasional accolades among tastemaker chefs, we just didn’t “get it.”

Over the years, we sampled the espresso at well over 30 different places serving Equator Estate coffees and purchased some roasts for our home use. We invariably found them to be too tepid in flavor depth, richness or “personality” to make them stand out from the crowd. It was only this year that we finally came across an example of their coffee we truly liked. To this day, it remains the lone exception, and we suspect that some of this has to do with a lack of quality control over their delivery chain (e.g., cafés/restaurants that let their coffee lose flavor and go stale, etc.).

But of course, we’re only one opinion with a taste palate that may radically differ from anyone else’s. For example, we’ve recently come to the conclusion that, pound-for-pound, we somewhat regularly produce better results at home with the coffee from Barefoot Coffee Roasters rather than, say, the celebrated Blue Bottle Coffee — an opinion that may count as blasphemy among so many Blue Bottle loyalists in the city.

However, there’s no question that our congratulations must go out to Equator Estate Coffees for earning Roast Magazine‘s 2010 American Roaster of the Year Award: Equator Estate Coffees and Teas Wins Coffee Industry’s Top Honor. Past winners have included the likes of Intelligentsia Coffee & Tea, Zoka Coffee Roasters, and Stumptown Coffee Roasters — which is great company in any context. Now only if we could find a way to appreciate their coffee in the way others obviously have.

Saturday mornings in the southern part of the city (my neck of the woods) — amidst a maze of freeways, live chickens in a stupor, and competitive, full-contact roller derby among elderly Chinese-American women (just without the roller skates) — is Alemany Farmers’ Market time.

This ain’t no yuppie Ferry Building farmers’ market; this is where the locals get down and dirty to compete for fresh fruits and vegetables at a discount. It mellows out as the morning progresses, but come early and you had better bring your game face, your knee pads, and prepare to throw some elbows back in self-defense: few area events can match the Hobbesian fight club required to purchase the morning’s bok choy before it is picked over. I haven’t experienced mosh pits like this in the Bay Area since I saw Fugazi play Berkeley’s 924 Gilman Street for their 1990 Repeater tour.

As a curious enough side note, this past week I randomly came across a half-hour of video footage of that very show on YouTube — video I had no idea was being taken at the time. And sure enough, I’m all over the video: at the front of the stage, looking like Cousin Itt‘s mutant tall brother. Let’s just say that the experience of seeing yourself on YouTube 19 years after the fact, in video you didn’t know existed, was bizarre enough that I had to submit the phenomenon as “deja tube” on urbandictionary.com.

With that kind of slam dancing, it’s either a Fugazi concert or the Alemany Farmers’ Market:

Sabores del Sud and Ritual Coffee Roasters

But back to the Farmers’ Market… Further away from the mainstage mêlée are the prepared food vendors, including Sabores del Sud — a Walnut Creek-based caterer that runs a cart service specializing in South American food. They offer Argentine alfajores and are the only option at the market for espresso (although even that is arguable). Using a single-group Astra machine and Equator Estate beans, they pull shots with absolutely no crema. However, the shot is full-bodied and carries a bit of flavor: mostly a mellow spice and some earthiness. Not a bad cup, but the espresso they make doesn’t differ much from filter coffee. At which point you’re better off getting something from the nearby Ritual Coffee Roasters tent.

At the Ritual tent, they don’t offer espresso. But I appreciate good coffee purveyors who know their limits of what’s good in the field, and espresso doesn’t always travel well outside of the café. This Ritual booth makes French press batches and uses them to fill air pots. For $2, we had an excellent cup of their Finca El Recuerdo Colombian micro-lot coffee.

If you were impatient for a morning cup, the woman attending the Ritual booth was a little over-earnest to customers in line: taking a bit of time to explain Colombian microclimates and the process of making fully washed coffee. But this is a farmers’ market for locals. As long as you’re not among the early morning “professionals” — those thrown to the mat by a cadre of 78-lb/78-year-old Chinese grandmothers in hot pursuit of cheap long green beans — chances are that people are going to strike up conversations about the lightning bugs and recent weather back home in North Carolina.

Read the review of Sabores del Sur. As for the Ritual Roasters booth, we still don’t rate it if it isn’t espresso.

A few things have changed since our last trip report from the Crissy Field Warming Hut. Some of the changes are related to an electric car that mysteriously burst into flames here exactly two years ago; the water damage from putting out the fire shut The Hut down for repairs for most of 2007. But more to the point of this post, The Hut changed their espresso set up — and surprisingly for the better.

The Warming Hut is an old army shed converted some time ago into a café and bookstore. When you’re standing there in the billowing fog and blasting winds from the nearby Golden Gate, you immediately understand how it got its name. Inside locals and tourists alike warm up to soup, sandwiches, baked goods, juices, and espresso among a few indoor tables. For the courageous, there’s also plenty of picnic tables outdoors.

The greening of the Warming Hut

As part of the evolving Presidio, and the repairs from water damage, today The Hut clubs you over the head with its sustainability and green themes. In secular San Francisco, social and environmental causes have become our surrogate religions, and public spaces such as Crissy Field and the newly reopened California Academy of Sciences have become our temples.

It’s all a matter of personal taste, but for us, just as with The Organic Coffee Co., there’s a fine line between supporting a cause and opening what almost feels like a religious theme park. And because American marketing is about as subtle as Whitney Houston passing a kidney stone, and since it relies on frequently changing campaigns to retain top-of-mind attention, we get the feeling that some of these over-earnest “green branding” efforts will seem painfully dated within a decade.

So although The Hut previously made quite respectable espresso from a three-group Mr. Espresso Rancilio and a custom blend of Mr. Espresso beans, the sustainability wonks here must have decided that Mr. Espresso just didn’t measure up to the public image they wanted for their new temple. So they upgraded to a nicer two-group La Marzocco GB/5 machine, and they switched to a more prominent “cause” coffee in Equator Estate Coffee.

From their La Marzocco, arguably employing less skilled baristas to operate their equipment than in prior years, they serve a correctly-sized espresso in a short paper cup. It has a decent layer of light-to-medium-brown crema and a rather potent aroma. The flavor here has more depth and pungency than before — suggesting richer spices and tobacco suspended in a decent body. This place originally overextracted their shots a bit, but that (and their espresso) has since improved with shorter pours in recent years.

The question of Equator Estate Coffees

Equator co-owner and roaster, Brooke McDonnell, posted here prior about the very subjective nature of coffee tastes and preferences. And she was entirely correct. Since we were largely underwhelmed after sampling Equator Estate coffees at dozens of restaurants and cafés, we questioned whether there was just something about Equator’s coffee that just didn’t suit our fancy (Thomas Keller be damned).

We also questioned whether Equator Estate was a victim of their resellers: coffee is often only as good as the people preparing it for retail. But after buying whole beans of Equator Estate for home use on multiple occasions, the underwhelming results pointed a finger back to Equator’s coffee and our own taste buds.

After five years and over fifty shots of espresso made with Equator Estate beans, we were finally impressed last week at The Warming Hut. This now paints a slightly different picture of our opinions: the majority of our disappointments with Equator Estate coffees likely stems from a personal preference for only some of their roasts and/or the post-roasting handling in their retail distribution chain.

Whatever the case, unlike most examples of Equator in the area, this is a major exception. Equator finally has a retailer who can showcase their coffee somewhat (regrettable paper cups aside) — something the French Laundry couldn’t even achieve. Whether if this is by freak accident or through deliberate intent remains to be seen. But for now, appreciate this oddity of a café as one of the better examples of good espresso in the city.

Read the updated review of the Crissy Field Warming Hut Bookstore and Café

Fort Point’s slow and steady Renaissance

As SF locals, we’d also like to make a shout out for all the positive changes going on at nearby Fort Point, a brief walk up Marine Drive from The Warming Hut — just beneath the San Francisco end of the Golden Gate Bridge. We’ve been visiting this site on and off for nearly two decades, but things have really accelerated in the past couple of years.

On the negative side, the post-9/11 threat of terrorism has made the “No Trespassing” chain link fence encroach from just under the bridge to now encompassing most of the fort itself. But inside the fort, they’ve invested in building out historical exhibits, and they opened up access to the roof of the fort for some pretty amazing views. It’s always good to see investment in the preservation of SF landmarks (something we’re bound to see less of given the current economy), and surprisingly access is still free.

The post title is the question of the day. If I may paraphrase an old quote from a previous post — where we asked, “How does the fool who knows nothing about wine impress his guests?” — the answer is: by buying the most expensive coffee they can find — along with a good story to tell about it.

Case and point with American wünderchef, Thomas Keller. In a press release this month: Chef Thomas Keller’s The French Laundry and Per Se establish one-of-a-kind coffee program [56kb, MS Word doc]. Yes, the man behind America’s most esteemed of restaurants — including Yountville’s The French Laundry and New York’s Per Se — has proudly announced to his customers that his restaurants will now offer Panama Esmeralda Geisha coffee roasted by the consistently underwhelming Equator Estate Coffees.

But how can you knock that? After all, at least they’re not pushing kopi luwak, right? Problem is that the coffee service at The French Laundry is well, uh, severely lacking compared to the otherwise lofty dining expectations and l’addition. (For example, their espresso scored lower than the Starbucks at SFO.) So rather than get educated, train staff, and elevate the craft (if not also chuck their superautomatic Schaerer espresso machine for something less suited for an assembly line), they take the lazy short cut of espousing the merits of “the most expensive coffee in the world” on their menus.

And to drill the point home that they have the whole coffee-as-wine thing confused, here’s a direct quote from their press release — from their master sommelier, a man who sounds like he clearly knows the difference between his Malabars and his Harars:

Paul Roberts, Master Sommelier and the Wine and Beverage Director for the Thomas Keller Restaurant Group notes, “We’re delighted to have the opportunity to bring our guests such a rare and extraordinary coffee as the Panama Esmeralda Geisha. The coffee is a truly a gold standard, and a wonderful compliment to our fall menu offerings.”

Thomas Keller’s restaurants don’t have to brew the best cup in the world. But if they’re going to promote an image of coffee connoisseur savvy to match their prowess with food, they should at least have invested more time and thought into it than they spend on boiling an egg.

I can buy some Geisha at the Peet’s Coffee around the block from where I work; I don’t need a restaurant to do that for me, charge me $210 for the privilege, and then act as if they just made me a 1959 Château Margaux with their bare feet. I’m respecting Coi Restaurant more and more for gracefully not pretending to be something they’re not.

UPDATE: Oct. 31, 2007
Sasha Paulsen, Food Editor for the Napa Valley Register, tells the story of her invitation to the French Laundry for a grandiose sampling of their Geisha coffee: Napa Valley Register | Tasting coffee of the gods.

In the article, she recounts Mr. Roberts’ use of descriptive adjectives and his telling of the story behind the coffee’s/estate’s history — which curiously looks like a verbatim recitation of what was once posted on the Peet’s Coffee Web site. (The Web page has since been taken down as their supplies ran out.) What remains to be seen is if Mr. Roberts and/or Mr. Keller are capable of demonstrating any knowledge of good coffee beyond the most overhyped coffee in years, let alone the Peet’s Web site.

La Colombe Torrefaction, a Philadelphia-based roaster that’s been something of an East Coast analog to Blue Bottle Coffee Company, has regularly received national recognition for the quality of their roasted coffee. But on the West Coast, La Colombe may as well be based out of Belgium; they’re largely unknown around these parts.

In an attempt to help remedy that, last year La Colombe set up a simple West Coast distribution office — just two-blocks from the Piccino Cafe in Dogpatch. From here they receive fresh shipments from their Philadelphia roaster about every two weeks and ship it out (via UPS) to various local restaurants and cafés in town and up and down the West Coast — from Los Angeles to Las Vegas and beyond.

Recently I was invited by Damien Pileggi of La Colombe to pay a visit to their humble SF office — to share stories and to taste some really good espresso. Damien previously worked in one of La Colombe’s Philadelphia cafés, and seven months ago he came out West to run their operations out of Dogpatch. (It’s pretty much a one-person operation.)

The Illinois St. office is a modest space consisting of a couple weeks of inventory of their various coffee lines — e.g., Nizza, for espresso, Corsica, for drip, and pod supplies for the restaurants and other retailers that insist upon it. Freshness, and hence inventory rotation, is of critical importance. And like all the other premier roasters in the area, they struggle with finding a place to showcase their coffee by preparing it to their own standards. This is perhaps the biggest piece missing from their West Coast presence.

With so many elite-yet-coffee-clueless restaurants in the area serving poor, copy-cat renditions of Equator Estate Coffee, I’m surprised that so few have caught on to the unique, distinctive coffee service proposition offered by the likes of La Colombe and Ecco Caffè (for example).

Of course, you can’t count on restaurants making good espresso. But competition for great espresso is a good thing. Hopefully someone will soon pick up La Colombe in the area and prepare it to its full potential.

UPDATE: Oct. 1, 2007
It’s been well over a week since I brought home some of La Colombe’s Nizza blend, and it’s held up amazingly well. There is a lot of coffee where freshness gets you most of the way there. Rarer are the roasts and blends that hold up well with time because they offer a richer flavor profile. In practice at least, the Nizza has produced a very generous crema with a creamy, well-rounded flavor and full mouthfeel. This is a coffee that shines if handled properly.

An espresso review for a restaurant where the cheapest item on the dinner menu is $210 may seem a bit irrelevant, but it is important for what it represents: a gold standard for food and wine. Back in September, we reviewed one of San Francisco’s most highly regarded dining establishments, Michael Mina. But to many of the fine dining elite and notable chefs alike, Napa Valley’s The French Laundry marks the height of American restaurant cuisine. Thus the question: given such immense expectations, how do they deliver on their espresso?

The French Laundry resides in a stone house with a low profile on Yountville’s main road (Washington St.). Among two floors of dining, a swarm of restaurant staff serve among two or three coordinated tasting menus of nine-course, set meals. Personally, my favorite courses included the carnaroli risotto biologico, topped with shaved white truffles from Alba (served out of the requisite wooden truffle box), and their signature roulelle de tête de cochon — quite literally a delicate pork roll made of meat from a pig’s head (it is far more appetizing than it sounds, regardless of its off-putting description).

The wait staff are serious, professional, and rather stiff. The challenge of getting them to crack a smile was often like that of the Queen’s Guard at Buckingham Palace. But some opened up more than others — which was instrumental to learning more about how they made their espresso. Super Chef Thomas Keller (whom one relaxed staffer jokingly called “TK” with a sort of faux familiarity) has publicly sworn by Equator Estate Coffees. But their decision to use a superautomatic Schaerer machine is what caught me by surprise.

“Once in a while you might see me at In and Out Burger.” – TK

The staff beamed when speaking of how they could set a precise temperature for the Schaerer’s automatic milk frothing, and they liked how it could allow them to make espresso on auto-pilot. Ultimately, they seemed happily and blissfully ignorant of what it takes to make a decent espresso. (They all could recite their bean supplier offhand†, but, for example, they knew nothing of the machine until I asked about it.) Yet this is a restaurant that performs on-site training and development of their own sommeliers like a baseball farm club.

I should have guessed the level of institutionalized coffee ignorance at The French Laundry when I noticed a dessert menu item that included “crushed espresso beans”. Given that “espresso” is strictly a brewing method for ground coffee beans — a preparation — and not a flavor or style of roast, “espresso beans” makes as much culinary sense as “quiche eggs”. This may seem overly picky, but this is one place that has no excuse for getting it wrong.

They serve espresso with a somewhat frothy medium brown crema that’s not very thick, but it coats the cup well. It has a decent body and a more interesting and complex flavor than drip coffee. But otherwise, its modest flavor of mild spice and some herbal pungency does not distinguish it much. There isn’t a robust aroma, a bold depth of flavor, or even a delicate sweetness to the cup that I would expect from a restaurant of its caliber.

The French Laundry certainly delivers on high expecations for food with their elaborate nine-course tasting menus. They deliver on service with their educated and professional staff. And they certainly deliver on wines — from vintage bottles of Cristal Champagne to Gaja Barolo to Dujac Burgundy. (Though I am still surprised that, despite Keller’s perfectionist control over the menu, The French Laundry does not offer a single flight of recommended wine pairings.)

When it comes to espresso, they certainly deliver on expectations for what they serve their espresso in — porcelain from Raynaud of France. However, the espresso itself is clearly a let down here: “not bad” just isn’t good enough. They literally provide the same coffee service you can get with an $8.95 turkey club sandwich from Sellers Markets. TK: you could do so much better.

Read the French Laundry review.

UPDATE: Nov. 3, 2007
† — Despite the French Laundry staff’s universal acknowledgment of Equator Estate Coffees as the coffee supplier for both their drip coffee and espresso, Brooke McDonnell of Equator Estate Coffees recently posted information to the contrary on this site — claiming that Illy has always supplied the French Laundry for their espresso. So someone is misinformed. Given that the French Laundry staff are much closer to product delivery, we’re prone to side with their version of events — even if their knowledge of coffee is extremely limited.

The Pearlina tea shop shut down and was replaced by this French bakery/café. At its heart is a great artisan baker who makes extraordinary pastries and breads (and is a true artisan: no cookie cutter stuff here). This is the baker’s only retail outlet, as the French team behind it have supplied some 40 local restaurants for years.

It’s a tight space with a few indoor tables along the windows facing the sidewalk, but there are also a couple of outdoor tables and a bench. They’re heavy on the Equator Estate Coffees branding — making it clear at every opportunity who supplies their coffee.

Using a two-group La Spaziale at the back, they pull espresso shots with a striped, medium brown crema — somewhat thinner in size but thicker in consistency — often with a white dot stretched across the top (they haven’t perfected their brewing temperatures). It has a solid mouthfeel, and it tastes smoky — of tobacco and herbs, but just short of any ashiness or bitterness. About as good an espresso as you can expect from a French place.

Read the review.