Posted by TheShot on 03 Nov 2009 | Tagged as: Beans, Café Society, Foreign Brew
Today’s Wall Street Journal published an article on Illycaffè’s quiet expansion in the U.S. coffeehouse market: Illy Uses Backdoor to Take On Starbucks in U.S. – WSJ.com.
Anytime someone tries to sell coffee in this country, the knee-jerk media presumption is that they’re going to “Take On Starbucks“™. Illy has always publicly stated that they would [...]
Posted by TheShot on 25 Oct 2009 | Tagged as: Café Society, Foreign Brew, Quality Issues
A few weeks ago we received the latest (and tenth) edition of the annual Bar d’Italia del Gambero Rosso for 2010. It is the closest thing in print we’ve seen to our Web site reviews, and we’ve generally found it indispensable when traveling Italy in search of good espresso. (We last reviewed the 2007 edition.)
Illy [...]
Posted by TheShot on 22 Oct 2009 | Tagged as: Café Society, Local Brew, Machine
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 [...]
[view full post]Posted by TheShot on 15 Aug 2009 | Tagged as: Café Society, Consumer Trends, Quality Issues, Starbucks
One of the things that the big coffee chains do well is consistency. Or at least that’s the conventional wisdom, lifted straight from the fast food chain playbook. A McDonald’s french fry is pretty much the same everywhere, and the coffee served at a big chain is little different. Or so we’ve all been told.
For [...]
Posted by TheShot on 27 Jul 2009 | Tagged as: Add Milk, Barista, Beans, Café Society, CoffeeRatings.com, Quality Issues
For a few years now, we had an idea for a post that sat in our unpublished queue: how can you tell a good espresso shop from a bad one? (At least before sampling it.) Given the thousands of good, bad, and mediocre espresso shots we’ve reviewed over the years, we have definitely noticed some [...]
[view full post]Posted by TheShot on 12 Dec 2008 | Tagged as: Barista, Café Society, Consumer Trends, Foreign Brew
Today’s New York Times blogged about a new barista-as-art exhibit at the Guggenheim Museum: Guggenheim Turns Coffee Into Art – City Room Blog – NYTimes.com.
Part of an art installation named Cinéma Liberté/Bar Lounge (we are told the other half is a movie), baristas behind a wooden bar serve espresso drinks from three Francis Francis machines. [...]
Posted by TheShot on 13 Mar 2008 | Tagged as: Café Society, Foreign Brew
This past weekend, the Sunday Herald (Scotland) published an article on Trieste, Italy and some its great cafés: A Shot In The Dark (from Sunday Herald). (Trieste is also home to illycaffè and the namesake for the local legend, Caffé Trieste.) The article touches on Caffè Tommaseo, the historic Caffè San Marco, Caffè Degli Specchi, [...]
[view full post]Posted by TheShot on 23 Feb 2008 | Tagged as: Beans, CoffeeRatings.com, Foreign Brew, Roasting
Occasionally this Web site can be the source of a real life story, and the story of Caffè Mokabar is a good one. For a little background, after a couple weeks of espresso research in Piemonte, Italy last October, we were most duly impressed with Caffè Mokabar among all the coffee roasters we encountered. So [...]
[view full post]Posted by TheShot on 06 Feb 2008 | Tagged as: Café Society, Roasting
News has been slow to hit the States, but the New York Times finally ran a story this morning on Dr. Ernesto Illy, chairman of Illycaffè and one of the world’s most notable espresso enthusiasts, who died Sunday night at the age of 82: Ernesto Illy, Chairman of Coffee Company, Is Dead at 82 – [...]
[view full post]Posted by TheShot on 21 Dec 2007 | Tagged as: Café Society, Quality Issues, Restaurant Coffee
Power to the espressophiles in New Zealand. A story in today’s news from New Zealand supports our longtime lament that cups really do matter when it comes to coffee quality: Burger King burned over coffee advertisement – New Zealand, world, sport, business & entertainment news on Stuff.co.nz.
A New Zealand consumer, B Hay, recently complained that [...]
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