Posted by TheShot on 02 Mar 2009 | Tagged as: Consumer Trends, Local Brew
We don’t reserve our Trip Reports for just the finer examples of retail espresso. As our database shows, we learn from forgettable and even wretched espresso shots. Falling somewhere between the two is Whole Foods Market. Their Potrero Hill location had to be a bit of a construction project, with a parking garage underneath the [...]
[view full post]Posted by TheShot on 11 Sep 2008 | Tagged as: Quality Issues, Robusta
Whether it’s coffee or Slow Food Nation (or both), today there’s a strong public undercurrent of knee-jerk, reactionary dismissiveness of anybody who dares suggest that the generic brand-X-in-a-can isn’t good enough for them.
The mistaken public belief is that most of the things we eat and drink today are somehow normal, inevitable, and “natural” outcomes — [...]
Posted by TheShot on 02 Sep 2008 | Tagged as: Barista, Beans, Fair Trade
As one of the final events of Slow Food Nation ‘08, we attended The Slow Food Foundation for Biodiversity Coffee Presidia tasting at Coffee Bar.
It is quite a mouthful of nouns. But the key points are that Slow Food is a non-profit, its Foundation for Biodiversity is a countermeasure effort to the dwindling food product [...]
Posted by TheShot on 01 Sep 2008 | Tagged as: Beans, Consumer Trends, Fair Trade, Quality Issues
It is Labor Day weekend in San Francisco. And the only thing keeping us from inaugurating Itching Man, our long-proposed rival event to Burning Man, was Slow Food Nation ‘08.
For a little background, we mentioned this event in a post last week. Given how it had been billed, we had hopes there would be elements [...]
Posted by TheShot on 24 Aug 2008 | Tagged as: Barista, Café Society, Foreign Brew, Local Brew, Quality Issues, Restaurant Coffee
Regular readers here are familiar with our squawking about Slow Food in this blog for almost three years now. You might even recall our pilgrimage to the Slow Food mothership in Bra, Italy last October. But in case you haven’t seen the orange and black posters everywhere, next weekend Slow Food comes to America for [...]
[view full post]Posted by TheShot on 23 Nov 2007 | Tagged as: Foreign Brew
Our Espresso in Torino and Piemonte series now turns to Bra, Italy. Bra carries a lot more influence than its 29,000 residents might suggest. For one, it is the unofficial capital of Piemonte’s Roero area — with a downtown that’s deceptively bustling for its size. Bra is also the world headquarters for Slow Food.
Of [...]
[view full post]Posted by TheShot on 16 Nov 2007 | Tagged as: Beans, Foreign Brew
Our Espresso in Torino and Piemonte series turns back to Torino for an espresso at Eataly — which has taken over the former Carpano vermouth factory across the street of Torino’s massive Lingotto complex. Torino is also the birthplace of vermouth and consequently the apéritif. (I am also quite a longtime fan of Carpano Antica.)
Formed [...]
Posted by TheShot on 13 Nov 2007 | Tagged as: Foreign Brew, Restaurant Coffee
This installment of our Espresso in Torino and Piemonte series comes from the very small town of Pollenzo, practically in the middle of nowhere. At least geographically speaking. But on the food map of Italy, this place is one of the country’s brightest stars.
One of the reasons is that it is home to the the [...]
Posted by TheShot on 24 Oct 2007 | Tagged as: Barista, Café Society, Foreign Brew, Quality Issues, Roasting
Piemonte, or Piedmont, is a province located in the Italy’s northwest — near the Alps. Other than the 2006 Winter Olympics, the region has largely been a blind spot on the tourist’s map. Travel guidebooks and TV programs routinely ignore it. And that’s just the way we like it.
For example, in Torino — Piemonte’s capital [...]
Posted by TheShot on 26 Aug 2007 | Tagged as: Barista, Café Society, Foreign Brew
I’ve been planning another road trip to Torino this October — my first since 2004. The wine and food are always excellent, the tourists are hard to come by (you can have an Italian city of almost a million people to yourself), Juventus is back in Serie A (and yesterday started the season off smashingly), [...]
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