Espresso News and Reviews – TheShot.coffeeratings.com

We are not the only ones who have lamented the sorry state of restaurant coffee — particularly at some of the Bay Area’s finest restaurants. The San Francisco Chronicle made poor restaurant coffee a front-page headline as early as 1963. In some ways, the elevated coffee standards that exist outside of the restaurant world are [...]

Australians are no slouches when it comes to appreciating good coffee. But last month, an opinion piece in The Australian highlighted what the author, John Lethlean, felt was a lot of misplaced fuss, pomp, and circumstance going into coffee origins these days: Just a strong one, thanks | The Australian. A self-described “coffee-geek groupie,” Mr. [...]

Yesterday’s Chicago Tribune reported on a curious coffee bar concept planned for Intelligentsia Coffee & Tea‘s latest location, currently under construction in Los Angeles’ Venice Beach. The concept includes featuring five different stations where five separate baristas personally attend to each customer, individually catering to their unique coffee whims: Intelligentsia plans a groundbreaking coffee bar [...]

If there ever was a news article that embodied what we’ve found unsatisfying about how barista competitions are promoted, this one from today’s News Tribune (Tacoma, WA) is up there: More than another cup of joe | TheNewsTribune.com | Tacoma, WA. Over the weekend, Tacoma hosted the Northwest Regional Barista Competition. Barista competitions may be [...]

Yesterday, the Seattle Weekly published a lengthy, thoughtful, and somewhat critical article on the exploding fad of consumer coffee cupping: Seattle’s New Way to Fetishize Coffee – Food – Seattle Weekly. As we’ve written here before, the coffee industry has shoehorned many wine analogies onto coffee appreciation. While this shorthand provides a simplistic reference point [...]

Saveur is one among many “gourmet” food, wine, and travel magazines (as much as we hate that hackneyed 80′s word) — but with a specific focus on international cuisines. “Saveur” being French for “flavor”. Now whether “Saveur Sav” would be a clock-and-beret-wearing member of France’s answer to Public Enemy is still up for debate. (Oui, [...]

Many of the new espresso joints in town have fortunately helped raise SF’s quality bar. But these new places also seem to monopolize all the love. It’s no wonder that crackpots spouting theories of some Third Wave are often taken seriously rather than laughed at, because this obsession with the new and devaluation of everything [...]

How is it that some people can unwittingly ridicule themselves far more than anyone else could while trying? Case and point with Folgers Coffee. Allow us to use a more bizarre application of the ever-popular wine analogy for coffee: for decades, Folgers profited as coffee’s equivalent of Thunderbird. But as consumers have developed more of [...]

The truth is out. What do die hard coffee drinkers in coffee-obsessed Australia really order?: Caffeine connoisseurs say lattes are the cream of the crop | Herald Sun. Yes, it’s the boorish latte. (And written by a boorish reporter: “Caffeine connoisseurs”?!? It’s been a while since we’ve seen the tiresome caffeine riff.) Of course we’re [...]

The return of baseball also marks the return of a popular form of that “North vs. South” rivalry — with San Franciscans channeling their hate for L.A. through the sport, and L.A. being, well, mostly oblivious. Last weekend, we witnessed that rivalry expressed through espresso — with San Francisco’s Chris Baca edging out the formidable [...]