Posted by TheShot on 10 Jun 2011 | Tagged as: Beans, Café Society, Local Brew, Roasting
икониSince we’ve long tired of reading about Stumpgate, it’s time to change the coffee conversation. So instead of the global growth and ubiquity of Stumptown Coffee Roasters, we turn our attention to something closer to home: the growth and ubiquity of Blue Bottle coffee. This relatively new neighborhood café caters to local UCSF medical students [...]
[view full post]Posted by TheShot on 14 Mar 2011 | Tagged as: Consumer Trends, Local Brew
Three years ago we identified something we called the low budget, ghetto chic conceptual art cafe — the said concept being consumers having to pay for full-priced espresso with the hipster privileges of having zero amenities. Last year some ad wizard decided these borderline coffee favelas should be called “coffee pop ups” (also formerly known [...]
[view full post]Posted by TheShot on 07 Mar 2011 | Tagged as: Local Brew
Locals rave about this coffee cubbyhole, which opened in July 2010, and you can see why. This colorful stretch of Mission St., in the heart of the Mission, has a dearth of decent coffee shops. At least ones that don’t serve ashy, overextracted dreck. This tiny shop offers four metal stools at a short counter [...]
[view full post]Posted by TheShot on 15 Dec 2010 | Tagged as: Add Milk, Café Society, Consumer Trends, Local Brew
There was a time when people bored with food found that it was a lot more fun when you put it on a stick. Or freeze-dried and packed it in plastic tubes as “astronaut food”. Today’s equivalent is the glorified roach coach, where bored (and sometimes broke) foodies tell us that everything tastes better when [...]
[view full post]Posted by TheShot on 29 May 2010 | Tagged as: Café Society, Home Brew, Local Brew, Roasting
Another installment in SF’s series of “espresso bars in strange places,” this one — open since 2009 — is located in a sort of gift shop. It’s a very small space identified by its bright green exterior, and there are a couple of small chairs for sidewalk seating. Inside there are mirrors, planters, birdcages, bath [...]
[view full post]Posted by TheShot on 22 May 2010 | Tagged as: Café Society, Foreign Brew
Don’t spro me, bro. That ridiculous sentence kept going through our heads when we visited Trabant Coffee & Chai near Pioneer Square. (Their other, mothership location is in the University District.) From afar, Trabant seems like they are trying to do some interesting things. They were voted Best Coffee in Seattle on CitySearch.com in 2005, [...]
[view full post]Posted by TheShot on 17 Apr 2010 | Tagged as: Barista, Beans, CoffeeRatings.com, Local Brew, Quality Issues
Frog Hollow Farm reserves a rather anonymous place in the retail coffee history of San Francisco, but it was a watershed for the coffee quality in this city. As much as we roll our eyes at the hackneyed and abused third wave term, by many definitions (theirs, and definitely not ours) this was SF’s first [...]
[view full post]Posted by TheShot on 29 Mar 2010 | Tagged as: Beans, Café Society, Consumer Trends, Local Brew
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 [...]
[view full post]Posted by TheShot on 08 Mar 2010 | Tagged as: Café Society, Local Brew
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 [...]
[view full post]Posted by TheShot on 17 Feb 2010 | Tagged as: Beans, Foreign Brew
At its best, Yountville is the New World epicenter for quality food and wine. At its worst, Yountville lays its claim to food & wine prominence through a fabricated culture of European fakery (more on that in a future post). One of the exceptions in town to this latter rule is this this odd curiosity [...]
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