God in A Cup of Coffee

SCAA executive director Ric Rhinehart, formerly of Groundwork Coffee, tells me I am famous in the coffee specialty world as the reporter who got deathly ill in Africa and just kept plowing on. That description flatters my vanity. I love having people think I am the kind of reporter who won’t give up, despite the blood and gore of a truly horrendous bout with e coli or the like–never did learn the precise nature of the bug that felled me during my reporting trip to Africa with coffee buyers Peter Giuliano and Geoff Watts in February 2007.

There is something comic in the fact that I didn’t contract this hell hole microbe in Africa. I contracted it in safe and boring Chevy Chase, Maryland, where I live. I know this because fifteen minutes after my plane to London took off from Washington DC’s Dulles Airport, I went lurching up the airplane aisle to a bathroom in the back and I stayed there all night. Clearly this was an illness I had contracted at home, maybe from the grapes I kept popping into my mouth (unwashed!) every time I passed through the kitchen in the hours before I boarded a British Airways night flight to London. i was so sick the flight attendants designated one bathroom on the plane just for me. No one was allowed near my own little torture chamber where gook of every vile color –including blood red — exited my body from its upper and lower channels of egress. I learned a lot of things that night about being ill that I would rather not know, including the fact that flight attendants can open the door to the bathroom from the outside.

I was supposed to meet Peter Guiliano of Counter Culture Coffee at Heathrow in London and we were to fly to Nairobi where we would meet up with Geoff Watts from Intelligentsia Coffee and Tim Chapdelaine from Volcafe Specialty Imports. We were to spend one day in Nairobi and then our party was to fly onto Rwanda to meet Tim Schilling and visit coffee farms associated with Project Pearl–that’s the US AID funded project that has helped Rwandan farmers significantly to raise the quality of much of their coffee and the price it commands on the world markets. From Rwanda we would travel to Burundi and then onto Ethiopia for the annaul East African Fine Coffee Association convention.

I stumbled off the plane in the morning and knew I wouldn’t be flying to Nairobi that day. I could barely stand up. I need to go to the infimary, I told the greeters from British Airways. There is no infirmary in Heathrow I was told, but there is a hospital nearby. Well, I need to go there, I said. British Airways arranged for my baggage to be held, and I was put on an ambulance and taken to Hillingdon Hospital, which turned out to be a living rebuttal to those who say the United States would benefit from British-style socialized medicine.

Someone took me to a small treatment room with, I am not kidding about this, human tissue of some sort or other staining the walls. Someone else stuck an IV in my arm and started fluids dripping. Only he forgot to open the valve. So the fluids didn’t drip. Instead, I lay alone in this miserable room, my gut aching hideously, and not quite believing that all my high hopes and excitement –new book contract, trip to Africa with world’s most famous young coffee buyers –had come to this. A hospital room with stained sheets and filthy walls in a God forsaken corner of London.

–tune in tomorrow to find out what happened next….

I had lunch in New York City two weeks ago with my book publicist, Dottie Jeffries. It was a special lunch. I had taken Dottie to meet my literary agent and talk about God in a Cup, which will be published at the beginning of May. After the hard and lonely work of writing a book, talking about press coverage and book parties made me giddy. A celebration was in order! Dottie and I decided to go somewhere festive for lunch.

Dottie suggested 11 Madison Park, the elegant, 3 star Danny Meyer restaurant where 29-year old chef Daniel Humm has been earning wow reviews since he took over the kitchen two years ago. We called. A table was available and off we went.

Eleven Madison’s soaring art deco dining room was awash with natural light. We each ordered a glass of Sancerre. Our wait person, a young woman who we later learned had recently graduated from the Culinary Institute of America, conveyed formality leavened with warmth. When we said we would start by sharing the beet salad, a slight smile danced across her face, and we knew we had picked a winning dish. Even before the food arrived, we inhaled pleasure. The slyly spicy wine. The crispy bread.

The beets were transcendent. Small cubes of red, pink and yellow on a delicate bed of goat cheese. It seemed impossible that the kitchen could tease so much sweet intensity from those brightly colored vegetables while completely avoiding any taste of dirt and iron. Our main courses were just as good. Dottie ordered salmon and I ordered snapper on a bed of caramelized leeks. We leaned back in our seats, sipped our wine, ate our fish, sopped our sauce with tidbits of bread, completely happy in that way that you are when your wellbeing is being orchestrated by masters.

Dessert and coffee? Of course, we are going to order dessert and coffee because we never want this meal to end. I questioned our server about the coffee. I write about coffee, I explained. Dottie showed her the cover art for my book. One, then two restaurant executives must have seen Dottie showing off my book cover because pretty soon they had joined the conversation. One of them talked about the coffee service at 11 Madison, explaining that the kitchen cares passionately about coffee. French press. Drip coffee. Cappuccino! Baristas who compete for cash prizes. They do it all and all to the world class standard that one would expect from a world class restaurant. Clearly a new day is dawning and great restaurants are beginning to “get it” about coffee! I was transported.

The dessert was chocolate and sublime with a surprising crispiness at the center instead of the usual mouthful of butter. The French press coffee was…..well remember the dirt that had been washed from our beets. The kitchen had saved it for the French Press. I couldn’t believe it. To cap off our perfect meal: a cup of ferment. Indonesia at its very worst. Dottie’s cappuccino was a little better. Decent foam. Mediocre crema. Mediocre espresso.

One of the restaurant staffers with whom we had been talking returned to our table. How’s the French Press, he asked. Not so great, I said. Well, you should try our drip coffee, its much better he said, adding that the French Press coffee came from a roaster who was a friend of one of 11 Madison’s backers. Hmmmm. Not the sort of thing you’re supposed to tell a journalist. He was right. The drip was better. But it wasn’t great and it certainly didn’t speak to the food. There seemed no relationship between the culinary sensibility of the kitchen and the culinary sensibility of those managing the coffee service.

So, OK, Thomas Keller is offering Esmeralda at French Laundry, and the word in coffee world (its a message I have written myself) is that high end restaurants committed to quality are beginning to pay attention to coffee, buyiing beans from high end roasters, offering French Press service or high quality drip and training the wait staff. That’s the story. But is it true? You tell me.

Below is a picture of me visiting Stumptown in Portland and making a stab at cappuccino-making. Stephen Vick, Stumptown’s talented trainer, found my efforts comical. Not without reason. Espresso making is a culinary art as demanding as pastry-making.