Espresso News and Reviews – TheShot.coffeeratings.com

Near SF’s Flatiron Building (yeah, we got one too), this one-time Starbucks kiosk arguably put the then-next-door All Star Cafe & Bakery at 550 Market St. out of business in its first year of existence. Yet despite morning lines of commuters waiting for their lattes, and an overworked crew of three in tight quarters with [...]

Ding dong, the Wi-Fi’s dead. At least that’s the message from some coffeehouse customers in an L.A. Times article today: Coffeehouses unplugging Internet access to reconnect with customers – latimes.com. It’s been a year since The Wall Street Journal first thought they invented Wi-Fi backlash. Although the L.A. Times cites the very same Four Barrel [...]

Quick!: name a city that’s surrounded by the exquisite natural beauty of mountains and seas, with brightly painted houses that decorate quaint neighborhoods, with great food everywhere you turn, with a nearby wine country consisting of hundreds of vineyards and many nationally renowned restaurants, with hipsters who frequent farmers’ markets in transitional neighborhoods, with a [...]

One of the most important, and most tragic, stories of human history since the age of the Portuguese explorers is the story of Colonialism. Today the vestiges of Colonialism are apparent everywhere from globalization to the impact of slavery and race relations around the world. For example, to look at the history of Cape Town, [...]

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 [...]

Good coffee cultures are exported. Starbucks grew by churning out a mutant strain of Italian coffee culture by the thousands. Fifteen years ago, we saw cafés in Prague that boasted “Seattle style lattes.” And while New York City is beating its chest lately over its recent coffee prowess — emulating one of its most famous [...]

One of the long running jokes among the (these days: masochistic) fans who follow Italian soccer is that — at least according to the Italian sports media — teams tend to go from “crisis” to “crisis” several times in a given season. If a top-caliber team doesn’t win for two straight matches, sono in crisi [...]

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 [...]

The danger of April Fool’s jokes is that sometimes you don’t know when they’re actually joking. Take Starbucks‘ announcement today of their new 128-oz Plenta beverage size: Starbucks Listens to Customer Request for More Sizes | Starbucks Coffee Company. Either Starbucks has developed a seriously acerbic, cynical streak about their customers — or they are [...]

Thanks to a helpful reader who today pointed out this find to us: Just Bottled: “Firelit” Blue Bottle Coffee Liqueur – Ünnecessary Ümlaut. If Starbucks is good enough for the booze bottle, why not Blue Bottle Coffee? Apparently that’s the question asked by the folks behind Firelit, a new coffee liqueur made from Blue Bottle [...]