God in A Cup of Coffee

Yesterday, I was standing on line at BWI airport, waiting to board a flight to Fort Lauderdale.  I was with my husband John, AKA the Latvian bread Nazi.  The flight was two hours late.  I was in a somewhat sad and distracted mood.

We were on our way to Fort Lauderdale to my mother’s house, for what will probably be our last family holiday/celebration there.  My mother’s health has been iffy this year.  Independent living has become a problem, and her house is for sale.  A time of transition for our family.

So I was standing in the Southwest line waiting to board  thinking thoughts more glum than excited even though we were heading towards sunny weather when I spotted a cheerful looking guy, also on line, wearing a red shirt and carrying a very large cake.

I chatted him up and learned his name is Ed.  His wife is Brenda, and it is Brenda’s dad, 76 year old Willis Hughes of Elida, Ohio who made the cake, following a cherished family recipe.

It’s a fruit cake, topped with pecans and  cherries and infused with lots and lots of brandy–when Ed removed the top of the cake dish so we could get a better look at the cak, the fragrance of Brandy wafted from the cake and tickled our noses.  Each cake takes Willis four to six hours to make and he makes a bunch of them every Christmas to be enjoyed by family members–the cakes are big and they get divvied up.  They also get transported, as Ed and Brenda were doing, taking this one to Fort Meyers where it would be shared with cousins and friends.  Willis’s secret for a fabulous fruit cake:  He soaks cheese clothe in a whole cup of brandy, then drapes the cake with the brandy infused clothe and lets it sit for 24 hours.  As a result his cake stays moist and naughtily alcoholic.

Being in the presence of the cheerful and excited Ed and Brenda and hearing the story of their family cake made so lovingly year after year by Brenda’s Dad, filled me with this wonderful feeling about ordinary people’s capacity to muddle through sad times and hard times with the help oftheir traditions and rituals and the  love and laughter of their family and friends.

To me being a foodie is an almost holy thing.  The beautiful  food — and beautiful coffee — we make and share with each other at this time of year and every time of year expresses our gratitude and our reverence for life.

Here’s Ed holding his father-in-law’s cake.  I wish them and all my friends a beautiful holiday and peace on earth.

I promised an editor that I would write a short online piece this afternoon.  The assignment is a tad boring, and I have a tendency when not engaged to procrastinate.

Which is how I came upon a post on coffeed.com,  that   appeared in the online New York Times on December 12th, 2008.

The post, by Jennifer 8. Lee describes an art installation at the Guggenheim Museum in New York City that recreates an iconic espresso bar with living baristas making espressos and handing them to passers by.

The installation plays with museum visitors’ expectations, destabilizing  their sense of reality and raising questions about about is art– but doing it in an ironic and humorous way.   Can a functioning espresso bar be a work of art that represents an espresso bar when real espresso trickles from the espresso machine’s grouphead?  I  love that kind of mind-bending confusion.

I can’t help feeling sad, though, that  espresso as art is being explored visually, but not in a culinary sense.  What’s iconic is the visual.  Issues related to the artful possibilities of the beverage are never raised.  This oversight seems emblematic to me of the continuing anomaly of specialty coffee.  No matter how many coffee articles are published in the New York Times, still, only a tiny portion of sophisticated coffee drinkers pay attention to the artfulness or lack their of the taste of the content of their cup.

 http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/12/12/can-serving-espresso-be-conside

DECEMBER 12, 2008, 12:14 PM
Guggenheim Turns Coffee Into Art

By JENNIFER 8. LEE
A new art installation at the Guggenheim Museum is giving out free cups of espresso and cappuccino. (Photo: Librado Romero/The New York Times)
Plunked on the spiraling ramp of the Guggenheim Museum is a wooden counter with young baristas working three red espresso machines, handing out free cups of espresso, cappucinos and lattes. The line for the giveaways sometimes stretches more than a dozen people down the ramp.

It’s confusing for many a passer-by.

Is the Guggenheim expanding its downstairs cafe? Are the stylish machines being celebrated for their design, as the Museum of Modern Art honors consumer products. Were the baristas performance artists? Or perhaps it’s a promotion for Illy Caffe? (à la Whole Foods- or Costco-style sampling … companies are getting awfully creative these days).

Actually, the bar, the espresso, the baristas and the experience of drinking are part of an installation in Guggenheim’s barely there, sometimes invisible exhibition, “theanyspacewhatever,” which runs until Jan. 7. It’s an experiential exhibit, one that emphasizes the artistic for senses beyond just sight.

Of course, the piece that has gotten the most attention is the bed-hotel room by the German artist Carsten Höller. A fee (reportedly $700) and a reservation will allow two people to spend the night. You don’t have to stay at the bed. Apparently you can walk around the museum, but a guard follows you around.

The coffee exhibit, just a stretch down from the bed, was created by Rirkrit Tiravanija and Douglas Gordon and is part of an installation called Cinéma Liberté/Bar Lounge. (The other half is a movie.)

This barista-as-art piece seemed really out there — a little beyond us. So City Room asked the installation: Um, do people really get it?

“Some of them do, some of them don’t,” said Mariuxi Tapia, one of the baristas.

“We always have to explain it to them,” chimed in Travis Rosenberg, another barista. He noted that a lot of people think the coffee is being given away free “because the Guggenheim is nice.”

Or they think it’s just a cafe, he said. “They’ll come and ask, ‘How much is it?’ and we’ll say, ‘Free.’ And they’ll say, ‘Three?’”

But others assume the baristas are the installation — perhaps models. “A lot of people will come and ask, ‘Are you the art?’ And we say, ‘As much as you are,’” Mr. Rosenberg said.

Mr. Tiravaniga is known for incorporating food into his art. In 1992, he made his mark by making and giving away Thai curry at a SoHo gallery to anyone who would come eat it. He had his first solo show at the Guggenheim in 2005.

“The artist tries to do socially interactive art — it’s challenging ‘Art as an Object’ and is more ‘Art as an Experience,’” explained Mr. Rosenberg, who himself is a musician.

Art as experience. O.K.

Arguably, New York is experiencing a coffee renaissance these days with cafes, coffeehouses and espresso bars popping up like mushrooms after a fall rain. And we hear, of course, about the art of espresso-making, the art of roasting coffee, the art of the white latte foam. But we wanted to know, can the consumption of coffee itself really be considered “Art?”

So calls were made to some coffee connoisseurs for their feedback.

“Can coffee be art?” mused Jonathan Spiel, owner of Tea Lounge, which is known for doing intricate designs in the foam on top of their lattes. “In a manner of speaking, yes.”

Though when pressed, he foundered a bit. “It’s a little bit out there for me, too,” he admitted. “I’m not sure what it means outside the art of making a cup of latte or good cappuccinos, and knowing your customer.”

Then, he added: “I don’t get the art experience of it as part as an exhibit. I wish I did know, because maybe I’d be in the Guggenheim.”

“I guess there is a deep, deep comment,” said Caroline Bell, co-owner of Cafe Grumpy, which has two shops in New York City. Ms. Bell compared the Guggenheim piece with how the Takashi Murakami exhibit at the Brooklyn Museum of Art also elevated the interaction with every day objects.

“Once you put it in that environment, you are forcing people to think of it that way,” she said.

There is, of course, coffee-napkin art, but that’s probably not what the Guggenheim is celebrating.

“Our idea is to make this coffee experience polysensual,” said Andrea Illy, the chief executive of Illy, whose coffee is being distributed as part of the installation. “It’s as if we are functioning in an installation. There is a practical function to this installation.”

Illy has a long history of artistic sponsorship, particularly with contemporary artists. “Usually we have our own projects within major artistic exhibitions,” Mr. Illy said. “To be presented as the art itself, that is something big. It’s the first time that has happened.”

Ms. Bell volunteered that the conversation with the barista itself can be savored. “Art is interaction,” she said.

Mr. Spiel echoed that idea of the customer experience: the ordering, the questions, the conversation, the exchange.

“We put your milk in it. We put your sugar in it for you. When we hand you a cup of coffee. We want you to take a sip and that is exactly what you want,” he said.

Then there is the art of making the coffee itself.

“Being a barista is an art, but it takes a lot of skill,” Ms. Bell said. “I don’t think coffee is art to a lot of people. In our stores, we try to consider it that way. It takes skill in how we prepare it.”

Of the installation, she commented, “Hopefully they are doing a good job in grinding.” (There actually is no grinding. The machines use pre-made capsules.)

Then there is art in the very space of the coffeehouses themselves, which are often crafted to be homey and comfortable.

“We want them to feel at home; our places are like an extension of their living room,” said Mr. Spiel, whose Park Slope Tea Lounge is a wide expanse of old couches and worn wooden tables.

Of course, if it is the comfy coffee house that the installation was aiming for, it falls awfully short. It has more a barren industrial feel than a welcoming lounge. The bar is made out of unpainted plywood. The sign is spray-painted on ina scrawl, rather than in a full-bodied graffiti. And instead of comfortable chairs, there are just two limp bean bags.

Then again, the whole experience of drinking espresso upstairs in the Guggenheim is startling and a bit contradictory, particularly since the security guards won’t let you bring coffee from the downstairs cafe upstairs — but you can walk around with coffee from the installation.

“The Guggenheim is a very special museum, it’s practically a sculpture,” observed Carlo Bach, the art director for Illy. “It’s like to drink a coffee in the middle of the sculpture.”

Apparently, the installation did not want the users to have too much of a user experience — or at least not the people who would stay overnight in the bed installation, Mr. Rosenberg said.

“We started hiding things so they couldn’t come down here and make their own coffee,” he said.

After my last blog post in which I suggested that there is no  US Coffee Capital because no city currently has a sufficient critical mass of superb cafes or restaurants serving superb coffee, I got an email from 2008 World Barista Champion Stephen Morrissey, agreeing in general and adding these thoughts:

” I guess my only point would be that from my experience,  America probably has the highest amount of truly quality focused cafes in the world.

Although in saying that, I think their percentage of good cafes versus bad cafes is probably the same as many other countries. If we say that 1 or 2% of Irish Cafes do a good job, that equates to around 5 cafes. The same percentage for the US probably comes to around 200, though that number might be a bit generous.

(And just to clarify, by good I mean grind fresh, clean their machine, extract well, own a decent knowledge of whats in the hopper and don’t become too complacent in their skills)

But yeah, a long way to go…”

 Based on my observations of the specialty industry, both as a journalist and as a consumer , I think Stephen nailed it.

A book reviewer in LA wrote nice things about my book, but criticized me for not recognizing that LA is the center of the US  specialty coffee culture.

Do I believe that LA is the center of the specialty coffee culture in the US?

No, I don’t.

There  is cool coffee stuff happening in LA, as there is in San Francisco, Seattle, Portland, Chicago, New York, and even my not-so-fashion-forward hometown of Washington, DC.    But possessing a few great cafes and a dozen or two restaurants where the chef “gets it” about coffee , doesn’t make LA or any city the center of the specialty coffee industry in the United State.

I won’t be ready to declare a specialty coffee capital until a town emerges where the chef of every bistro, boite and joint feels compelled to give as much attention to the coffee as he or she gives to the wine service……

OK, enough opining about the industry. What did I think of the coffee I drank  in LA last week?

Doing a coffee tasting at the LA Times (more book promoting) with Intelligentsia barista competitor and sales rep Nick Griffith, I had a chance to taste Intelli’s El Salvador microlot brewed in a classic drip pot.  These beans were outstanding, with a plummy sweetness, lots of body and a nice citrus finish.

Visiting Intelli’s Silver Lake cafe, I tried two other coffees. A beautiful  Guatemalan microlot (I have a weakness for Central American coffees) and a perfectly executed cappuccino made with Intelli’s Black Cat blend. (in case you are wondering, the lines at the Silver Lake store are long, and Intelli’s baristas are well trained, friendly and fast.)

I visited  LA Mill, the swish coffee/tea/food/dessert emporium a mile down the road from Intelligentsia in Silver Lake where the wait staff will brew  coffee in a siphon vacuum pot at your table–Seattle food writer Jonathan Kaufman told me he and a friend paid $60 bucks for their beautifully executed siphon coffee at LA Mill felt the experience was worth the price.

Me, I ordered cheap.   I ordered LA Mills  Ethiopian Koratie Dry Process,  brewed in a Clover, price $4.50.  I am not a huge huge fan of dry process (natural) coffees, and  I thought the Koratie tasted faintly musty:  still the bright notes were bright and the coffee had a nice stone fruit  thing going on.  The LA Mill coffee , however, could not hold a candle to the LA Mill chocolate chip cookie.  If I were cupping the coffee, I would have given it an 80.  If I were cupping the cookie, I would have given it a 95.  (My frisee and lardon salad was excellent, too, dressed with a coffee vinaigrette.)

 I drank a cappuccino at Luxe Cafe in Santa Monica.  Not memorable.

I tasted a brewed coffee and a cappuccino at Groundwork in Venice.  Pretty bad.

I  drank brewed coffee from the Austrian roaster Julius Meinl at the Austrian-themed 3 Square Cafe and Bakery in Venice.  The food at this Austrian-themed restaurant was memorable; the coffee, was of the sort that makes me ask, what was the chef thinking?  (You can buy Julius Meinl coffee at the Cafe.  The packaging is nice.)

 At the French bistro Annisette in Santa Monica, the coffee was from Illy and after an excellent meal, we skipped it.

As I say, I am not ready to declare Los Angeles the specialty coffee capital of the country. No doubt about it, though: Intelligentsia showing up on the West Coast has been a boon to the city’s coffee scene.

FYI, Intelligentsia’s second Los Angeles cafe, on Abbott Kinney Boulevard in Venice is slated to open late in January or there abouts.

I just got back from Los Angeles where I was promoting my book, including giving a coffee book talk at Google in Santa Monica where the young tech talent loves coffee –the Google “kids” have their own Clover machine.  The book talk went pretty well, I think, but not so well that I am looking forward to it downloading on Youtube, which it apparently will.  (One of the benefits or punishments of speaking at Google is having your doppleganger cast out into cyberspac.

The LA trip gave me a chance to catch up with some long lost coffee guys, take in the ne plus ultra scene at LA Mill and visit Intelligentsia’s wildly busy Silver Lake cafe–last time I saw the Intelli store, it was under construction and had not yet opened.

I also got to take in a bit of youth culture street theater.  On Saturday afternoon in Silver Lake near  Intelligentsia, some 60 or 70s costumed young santas affiliated with the santacom movement played instruments, drank beer and paraded around in the Saturday sunshine.  The event  exuded more good humor than hipster disdain–that  sunshine  good for mood.

The pro-humor, anti-materialist, screw sentimentality santcon.com movement  is staging events in several dozen cities this month, many of them took place on Saturday.  So while I was getting a charge out of the alternative santas in LA, back at my home town of Washington, DC santacon partiers were gathering at the White House making amusing puns:

 My favorite santacon santa guy, though, was the one I saw when I was driving.  He was a skinny Ichabod Crane kindofa guy in a red suit, perched high on a  unicycle, carrying his santa hat in his hand, peddling like crazy down Venice Boulevard.  Stupid me left her camera in the hotel.

On Saturday I met up with coffee consultant Trish Rothgeb (Trish at Peregrine)

for a visit to  Peregrine Espresso, the sleek new cafe owned and operated by Ryan and Jill  Jensen at 660 Pennsylvania Avenue SE, on the site of the now defunct Capital Hill Murky Coffee.

Owner Ryan Jensen at Peregrine

(Me at Peregrine. )

 Peregrine serves beautifully executed, excellent-tasting coffee and espresso.  The menu is elegantly short–just a few coffees are available at a time and the adulterants are kept to a minimum.  The pastries are fresh.  The design is pleasingly simple–pale walls, clean lines, nice art, and the Capital Hill locals appear to be grateful.  No sign of a recession in this shop.

(Skip the following paragraph if you are not interested in coffee “begats” :  Ryan Jensen, it should be noted, is a former Murky manager and a one time Counter Culture employee –Peregrine serves Counter Culture, as did/does Murky–Murky in Virginia still lives.  Trish Rothgeb, formerly of Zoka in Seattle,  teaches cupping at the SCAA cupping lab in Long Beach, CA in association with Vermont-based coffee consultant Mane Alves.)