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 24 Nov 2010 | Tagged as: Consumer Trends, Home Brew, Machine, Quality Issues
Thanks to friend of this blog, Shawn Steiman, for pointing out this somewhat amusing article from today’s New York Times: Loving Coffee Without Being a Drip – NYTimes.com. In something of an ode to the Mr. Coffee automatic filter drip machine, the author — Times food critic, Frank Bruni — laments the many overly precious [...]
[view full post]Posted by TheShot on 11 Nov 2010 | Tagged as: Beans, Café Society, Consumer Trends, Local Brew, Machine
The name is “Ma’velous”. We’re not sure if this is a New Yorker thing — like when Monday Night Football legend, Al Michaels, tries to pronounce the ‘h’ in the word “huge.” But the owner, Phillip Ma, is a self-fashioned coffee geek with apparently enough money for high-end coffeemaking toys but no real prior training [...]
[view full post]Posted by TheShot on 25 Oct 2010 | Tagged as: Beans, Café Society, Foreign Brew, Local Brew, Roasting
This past weekend, Barefoot Coffee Roasters celebrated their seventh anniversary. While the San Francisco Coffee Wars have clearly overlooked the South Bay, we’ve frequently traced some of our favorite coffee experiences back to this small microroaster and their tiny chain of cafés. Besides their flagship café in Santa Clara, they have recently expanded to a [...]
[view full post]Posted by TheShot on 16 Oct 2010 | Tagged as: Café Society, Foreign Brew, Starbucks
It had been eleven years since I last visited the Azores. A remote archipelago of Portugal, this small group of volcanic islands — isolated in the middle of the Atlantic — is the very verdant-but-austere birthplace of my in-laws. Since my last visit, Portugal converted from the escudo to the Euro, tying the country more [...]
[view full post]Posted by TheShot on 26 Jul 2010 | Tagged as: Beans, Café Society, Consumer Trends, Foreign Brew, Roasting
In the transitioning Cape Town neighborhood of Woodstock, which out-Missions the Mission, this espresso bar and roaster perhaps looks like no other you’ve seen before. Located inside the newly-art-conscious Old Biscuit Mill, this small space is a pristine, stark black-&-white-themed coffee lab that exudes meticulous organization. The Old Biscuit Mill is known in town for [...]
[view full post]Posted by TheShot on 27 May 2010 | Tagged as: Barista, Café Society, Foreign Brew, Quality Issues, Roasting, Starbucks
We wrap up our brief series on Seattle’s espresso and coffee culture with a few observations. First, it had been way, way too long since our last visit. Twelve years in fact. Which is all the more ridiculous given the kind of coffee tourists we’ve become. It was 15 years ago that I attended graduate [...]
[view full post]Posted by TheShot on 07 May 2010 | Tagged as: Café Society, Local Brew, Roasting
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 [...]
[view full post]Posted by TheShot on 31 Mar 2010 | Tagged as: Beans, Foreign Brew, Home Brew, Machine
The coffee culture export trade is in high swing, whether it is Stumptown Roasters opening in Amsterdam or Blue Bottle Coffee following Intelligentsia‘s footsteps and invading L.A.: Drip Bar, a Mobile Blue Bottle Café | NBC Los Angeles. Yes, that last article cites the tiresome caffeine-riff cliché abused by many an unimaginative coffee writer — [...]
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