God in A Cup of Coffee

…..I have been trying to track down information about the upgrading of the coffee at the  famed Cafe Flore in  on Boulevard St. Germain in Paris.  I understand Cafe Flore is now serving specialty coffee.  I  wonder if this is true, and if it is, I wonder what coffee is being served and how it is being prepared.

Introducing specialty coffee to the French is one of those mythical goals –like the retrieval of Excalibur–shared by many in the specialty business.  Innovative specialty roaster George Howell of Terroir in Acton, Massachusetts  (one of the founders of the Cup of Excellence competitions whose former roast works, Coffee Connection, introduced high quality specialty to Boston, Cambridge and much of the East Coast) told me last year that owning a roast works and cafe in Paris is one of his dreams.

I am wondering, too, if former world barista champion and nouveau coffee roaster James Hoffmann (I had hoped to visit his newly established Square Mile coffee roastery in London when I was in Europe, but the dates didn’t), will be selling coffee “across the pond.”

I hope readers with answers to these intriguing questions will email me.   Given the continuing culinary import of France, I think the awakening of La Belle France to the charms of specialty coffee  would have a salutary impact on the  specialty industry here in the United States, elsewhere in Europe and in Asia.

You can reach me at:  michaeleweissman@gmail.com

I’m back from two weeks in the northwestern corner of Brittany (in France), a rocky coastal area with prehistoric stone megaliths perched dramatically on cliffs above sandy beaches (the tides are among the highest in the world), fields of purple heather, palm trees–credit the Gulf Stream– picture perfect fishing villages, carrots growing in sand that taste more intensely carrot-like than anything you can imagine, red onions, fresh butter flecked with sea salt and on and on.    “Deep France,” was the English phrase a French woman who chatted me up in the Post Office used to describe this weather beaten region rich in pirate lore that even the French  consider off the beaten track.  The light was white toned, grey toned, pink toned, golden toned.  I felt like I was living in a painting for two weeks.

The weather  never climbed much above 60 or 65 degrees, perfect for hiking and exploring when the sun shined brightly as it did about half the time, a little bit demoralizing when it did not.

Here are two more pictures revealing my preoccupation with things gustatory:

Onion farmer stringing red onions for display prior to the Roscoff Onion festival–these onions may well be the sweetest on earth.

Black wheat (buckwheat) used to make buttery savory crepes with sauteed red onions, earthy Andouille sausage and other yummy ingredients (I wish I were eating one right now!)

Understanding that no one really wants to hear about someone else’s trip to France, I will cut to the chase right now and say that Brittany helped to redefine my notion of fresh and delicious, but the coffee was execrable, at times comically so.

The best coffee I drank in two weeks, was a cafe au lait from a pod machine!

The breakfast room of our lovely little hotel on the harbor in Roscoff reeked of coffee from a can set on a Bunn hotplate.  At the Micheline two-star, Restaurant Patrick Jeffroy in Carantec, we indulged in a four hour lunch in a private room overlooking the sea–by the time the monumentally mediocre espresso was served I was more or less too blissed out to care.

In the gorgeous town of Morgat that looks more like Provence than Brittany:

I ordered a cappuccino in a  little creperie  on the harbor and was served mounds of (yummy) whipped cream sprinkled with cocoa on top of espresso roasted, oh, say, two years ago.

In search of real coffee we made a trip to Morlaix where we had heard that a young “coffee guy” of the American and Northern European sort had  purchased a roaster and set up shop.  Alas, by the time we visited, he had gone belly up and his storefront was occupied by an Indian restaurant.

Hard to believe that people who attend so carefully to the taste of everything–the salt flecks in the butter!–pay no heed whatsoever to the coffee.

Our French friend Henri thinks that now that cigarettes have disappeared from French cafes and restaurants–I saw fewer smokers in Brittany than I see on the streets of New York City–a coffee revolution will follow.

More on this subject to follow….

I am just wrapping up a ten-day hometown media blitz for God in a Cup, and I am afraid my mind has not been on blogging. But I have to chime in on this insane controversy about 5-shot espressos and 20 ounce coffees.

Here in the polyglot, born-yesterday, no-sense-of-history US we don’t have a centuries old food culture that tells us the right way to do things. This, of course, has an upside: part of our entrepreneurial spirit has to do with the fact that we are always inventing the world anew. The downside is that we have no sense that there is a right way to do things. And some of the more primitive among us get really really angry when someone tells them that guzzling great vats of coffee in a single sitting might not be the best way to go.

I see the emergence of what we could call our “foodie culture” in the last dozen years as an effort, in a sense, to discover the right way to eat, the right way to grow and cook and celebrate food, and also the right way to drink wine.

Now the specialty industry is introducing ideas about the right way to drink coffee. And the blowback has been impressive.

But change comes hard.

Fact is, no self respecting restaurant –including that salt of the earth neighborhood pizza joint–is going to serve you 20 ounces of chianti when you order a glass. People get it when it comes to wine, that there is a certain way things are done. They know it without consciously knowing it that the size of the wine glass represents a decision that is gastronomic, economic and aesthetic.

Portion size in specialty coffee also represents decisions that are gastronomic, economic and aesthetic. Those who sell and serve the highest quality beans would like their customers to savor the contents of their cup, to drink less, taste more and realize that coffee and the coffee experience have value. This to me seems eminently sensible. And temper tantrums notwithstanding, I fully believe the time has come for these ideas to begin to take root.

Of course, those who see coffee as a nothing more than a vehicle for infusing caffeine into the bloodstream, jump up and down like trolls in a fairy tale, shouting WE NEED OUR SUPERSIZE FIX when told to limit their intake. I agree that one of the charms of coffee is the caffeine. Sure it’s a drug–in my opinion, it’s a wonderful drug. But here’s the joke, recent research indicates that when it comes to the attention-focusing impact of caffeine, less is more! It appears that those who guzzle nightmarish portions of coffee do not gain a proportional uptake in attention and alertness. The research explaining all this is laid very lucidly by a reporter named Mark Adams in a recent article in New York Magazine:

http://nymag.com/restaurants/features/breakfast/47395/

So that lovely little jolt in that single shot of espresso may be a much more reliable pick-me-up than the hammer-on-head 5-shot cup of excess. Humorous, eh?

There has been a schedule switch, and I am going to be on the Kojo Nnamdi Show on WAMU Radio, 88.5 on Wednesday, July 30th at 1pm, rather than on Thursday.

For those of you who have asked and those of you who might like to know, I will be promoting God in a Cup in my hometown, Washington, DC. You can read me and see me and meet me:

In the Washington Post:
Wednesday, July 23, lead story in the Food Section
You can read what I have to say about finding great coffee in the
Washington, DC area.

I will be signing books and talking at a coffee tasting
Thursday, July 24, 6:30PM
Grape & Bean,
118 S. South Royal Street in Old Town Alexandria 24th
(www.grapeandbean.com)

on Monday, July 28th there will be an article about me and about Washington, DC’s coffee scene in the Express, the Washington Post’s tabloid geared to Metro-riders

July 28th, at Politics & Prose, Washington’s beloved independent book store, I will be signing books and reading at a coffee tasting. 7PM
Politics and Prose
5015 Connecticut Avenue NW
www.politics-prose.com

On Radio
Thursday, July 31, noon
You can hear me on WAMU — 88.5FM
On the Kojo Nande Show

If you want to attend one of these events and would like to come up and say hello and you don’t know what I look like, here’s a noncoffeeish picture of my husband John and me that shows what I look like (on a good day.)

When I interviewed US barista champion Kyle Glanville two years ago, he talked about the impact of Andrea Illy’s book, Espresso Coffee: The Science of Quality, on his professional development. Ernesto Illy, Andrea’s father, is revered for infusing scientific precision into the art of espresso making, and the company has long been associated with the highest standards.

During that interview, Kyle noted that Italy’s dominance in the art of espresso had faded. “Italian fetishism,” he said with characteristic panache, “is no longer relevant.” Meaning that when it comes to the art of espresso making, Italians no longer dominate the field.

Indeed.

These days Illy and another Italian roaster, Lavazza, appear to be making major inroads in the American market. A number of restaurants I have patronized recently have listed espresso from one or the other of these companies on their menus. Stylishly designed cans of Illy and Lavazza are available in many high end food stores.

I have been told by a coffee guy whose opinion I respect, that Illy, when fresh, makes a fine espresso. I cannot speak to that. Suffice it to say, that my experiences with Illy coffee have not been positive. Hard to delineate how much of the problem is execution and how much relates to the innate qualities and lack of freshness of the coffee.

Earlier this week, however, I encountered an Italian import that redefined abysmal.

My husband and I were back in Florida checking in on my Mom. On Tuesday night we had a late late lunch at Charlie’s Crab, a family favorite located on the Intercoastal canal where you can take in the view while enjoying a pretty good meal.

Charlie’s is part of the Chart House chain and on this visit, its corporate roots were more visible than in the past. The portions were big. The sauces were gloppy. A crab, mango and avocado “stack” I used to love, was weighted down with copious amounts of tasteless mayonnaise.

The waiter was friendly, but unmindful.

And the coffee?

The first little cups placed before us were tepid–maybe 110 degrees F. I had a hard time believing this coffee had been heated and forced under pressure through an espresso machine.

We told the waiter the coffee was cold.

He didn’t remove the first cups when he set the second set of espressos before us–I told you he was unmindful.

The liquid was thin and it tasted like Sanka.

The waiter looked at me.

Where does this coffee come from, I asked.

Lavazza, said the waiter, a tall thin guy from Brazil who had come to Fort Lauderdale for the swimming.

Pods? I asked.

Pods, he said.

Oh, I said.

Omigod, I say. Lavazza has defined the bottom of specialty. Alleged specialty. I doubt McDonalds could do worse.

What I love most about the specialty coffee world is its inventiveness. Many people in the business have an in born need to throw themselves, heart, soul and innards into what they do. “Coffee guys” ( this term encompasses women, too) like the ones I write about are driven to keep learning, to experiment, to question the common wisdom, to push specialty in new directions. There’s a relentlessness to their commitment, a monomania, that attracts a writer the way an ice cream truck attracts kids on a playground.

What’s often missing in the specialty world is EQ–emotional intelligence. That all important form of intelligence that helps a person understand other people, understand his or her own impact on others, understand the complexities of human relationships, understand the importance of context in all human interactions and correct course based on these perceptions.

Lots of guys have emotional intelligence, but I think it is fair (meaning not sexist) to say that more women possess this important quality. Which may explain why I have occasionally felt so lonely when hanging out with an all male group of coffee guys in some remote corner of the world. And why meeting a perceptive, insightful “coffee guy” of the female persuasion is so much fun.

Enter Erin Meister, age 26, barista, barista trainer, blogger and professional coffee

tutor.

Erin is a woman with emotional intelligence, as well as the other kinds.

Our paths had crossed a few times, but she and I had never t really talked until I invited her to the party some old friends threw for me in New York City when God in a Cup was published last month.

That’s when Erin told me that she had developed a sideline as a “coffee tutor” or teacher, helping clients in New York City learn to how to best use their home espresso machines.

“You mean you’re a coffee consultant?” I asked somewhat incredulously, not quite getting it. (OK, I was a little buzzed.)

“I shy away from the word consultant,” Erin said. “I lam a tutor. Like someone who comes into your house to teach you math, only I do that with espresso machines and coffee.”

I found this new niche for specialty coffee expertise really interesting and made a date to talk with her on the phone.

Erin’s gig as a coffee tutor grew out of her work as a barista. Being an interactional sort, she got to know her customers well, talking at length with them about coffee and espresso making. Often a customer would express frustration at his inability–generally it’s guys with some techie skills who buy home espresso machines–to master the complexities of espresso making.

One thing led to another and pretty soon Erin and a fellow barista with whom she went into partnership were building a coffee tutoring website (www.biynyc.com), writing a manual for home espresso makers, and scheduling home visits.

Most of her clients, Erin reports, are men in their 30s to mid 40s who own their own apartments. “They tend to have moderate to high moderate espresso machines and have done a lot of research.” Their book-learning, however, hasn’t provided them with a sense of the physical skills required to operate an espresso machine well. “They haven’t gotten the tamp down,” Erin says., “They have to work on the fluidity of the movement. It’s like trying to learn about choreography from a book. You can’t do it. So I come over and help them put the moves together.”

Erin finds comments of the “only in New York” variety about her tutoring business annoying and short-sighted. “I haven’t found my clients to be rich or entitled. If these guys really had a lot of money, they would be paying someone else to make their coffee.”

Her clients, she says, are specialty coffee’s core customers: “They’re foodies. They’re really interested in wine. They read about coffee, are willing to invest in high quality equipment, are willing to try different beans and have a real love of coffee.”

Erin teaches them skills like “temperature surfing… Home espresso machines,” she explains, “don’t have much temperature stability—the boiler is small and the heat source unstable. The milk and espresso share the same boiler, so sometimes you have to trick the machine a little to get the temperatures you need.”

She teaches her clients, “techniques for fooling the machine. When someone is starting out, they don’t think in these terms.” Under ordinary circumstances, she explains, you want the water to be heated to 205 degrees F or less, while milk is steamed at a higher temperature. “You don’t want to mix the grounds with steam-heated water, because the steam will scorch the espresso, so you have to purge the steam from boiler,” she says.

Mastering an espresso machine, she adds, “is like learning another language. I think for me, these skills are instinctual, so I have had to learn how to teach…”

She has also learned to appreciate the dynamic that goes on between her clients and their wives and girlfriends who often sit in on the tutoring sessions. Sometimes, when the student asks a question or makes a comment, his spouse or spouse equivalent will say, “Honey, that’s not what she (meaning Erin) said to do.”

“What you get is a little bit of backseat barista-ing,” says Erin. “It’s a very funny, sweet dynamic. You get to see a little bit of the human relationship.” (if you have the emotional intelligence to notice.)

These days, in addition to tutoring, and writing, Erin is working as a copy editor at Time Out New York. I asked her if she missed being a barista. “I miss the customers,” she says. “I miss talking to people about coffee all day.” In my opinion as, admittedly, an outsider, the specialty industry needs people with her kinds of coffee skills and people skills.

You can reach Erin at: http://meetthepresspot.blogspot.com

-endit.

I spent yesterday being a talking head for a documentary on coffee that will air on the Discovery Channel. We taped the show at Murky Coffee in Arlington, Virginia.

The producer, Dana Millikin, had hoped to interview Murky owner Nick (Cho), but Nick is off in Copenhagen emceeing the World Barista Competition. In fact when I arrived back home from Nick’s cafe, I heard Nick talking in my house, well, talking on the radio in my house, in a National Public Radio segment on barista art taped in Copenhagen. Hearing him after spending the day in his cafe, gave me one of those sci fi feelings, as if what is in my head is shooting out into the universe.

The documentary producer, Dana Millikin and the camera man were food lovers eager to learn about coffee. I relived my own “coffee conversion” watching them experience their first “real” cappuccinos made with whole milk and Counter Culture’s Espresso Toscano–velvety foam, a mouthful of chocolate caramel, perfectly executed rosettas, framed in white, then ringed with brown. Smooth as cashmere. How I love the sensuality of a good cappuccino.

The baristas, Travis Edwards, David Flynn and Katie Duris, turned out competition-quality caps all day–OK, the presence of a TV crew might have had a teeny tiny impact on their stellar performances. but these guys are good.

The coffee that blew me away, though, was from Nyeri, Kenya–Counter Culture’s Kangocho Auction Lot 4587.  On CC’s  website this coffee is described saying it,  “offers layers of black cherry, dried currant, dark chocolate, and allspice above a substantial, velvety body.”  I tasted a round mouthful of spicy grape juice. Mmmm.

I sipped the Nyeri and then handed the cup over to Dana Millikin, the producer who as the day progressed was becoming my new best friend.   As Dana tasted the coffee a look spread across her face. “Now I get what you mean about drinking brewed coffee black,” Dana said with a certain wonder.  “Coffee like this doesn’t need enhancing.”

 By 2pm, I was pretty hungry, and it was clear we weren’t going to break for lunch. I stared at the pastry in the counter and eventually  I bought a chocolate chip biscotti.  It was big, and I  attacked it  with  the good manners of, oh, a dog, driving his teeth into a bit of red meat.

Ohhhhh.  Disappointment.  Wrong texture.  And cinnamon.  I don’t want to taste  cinnamon in my biscotti!  Almond, yes.  I want to taste almond, but not cinnamon.

Phooey.

I guess sourcing great cookies is even harder than sourcing great  coffee.

(I am going to ask Dana Millikin to email me some pictures from yesterday’s shoot at Murky, and I will post them here.)

I had dinner last night at one of my favorite restaurants in the DC area: Black Market Bistro.

Black Market is located in a restored Victorian house across from the railroad “station” (in fact there is no station, just a stop) in a leafy 100-year old suburb called Garrett Park. With its towering trees and welcoming tennis courts, picnic tables and town green, Garrett Park recalls the time in America when people with taste and money wanted to live in suburbs.

The setting doesn’t mean much, of course, if a restaurant’s food and wine don’t live up to the visual. Not the case at Black Market.

There were three of us last night. My husband and our friend ordered one of Black Market’s signature dishes. Pan Seared Monkfish, served over saffron-flavored papas bravas, small cubes of potatoes in aioli, with sauteed haricot verts and a tomato parsley relish. I had the New Orleans style barbecue shrimp served with wilted swiss chard and creamy sweet corn grits that were to die for. Unsure whether to order a bottle of Sauvignon Blanc from Australia or the dry Riesling from New Zealand, our server brought us a taste of both and we chose the Riesling, which had a zesty lemon/honey thing going on. ($36.)

I could describe the frozen mango mousse we shared for dessert, but I will spare you. Suffice it to say: the food and wine and setting at Black Market provided us with a satisfying laughter-filled oasis from everyday life, reminding us all why we love dining out.

The quality of the meal did not come as a surprise because Black Market is one of four restaurants owned by local chefs Jeff and Barbara Black. Each one of their places –Black Market, Black’s Bar & Kitchen, Addies, and BlackSalt Restaurant and Fish Market ( without question the best fish store in DC), are all gems.

So why when I asked about the coffee last night, did our talented wait person proudly proclaim that coffee. espresso. cappuccinos and lattes were provided by Illy Caffe? How can it be that talented food people like the Blacks serve coffee that tastes like dreck?

Don’t they taste their own coffee?

The answer is, “no!”

They don’t taste coffee consciously and purposefully using the same set of standards and expectations that they apply when assessing other foodstuffs.

I have been pondering this mystery all morning, and I have decided what is required is a “conversion experience.” Until chefs’ understanding of coffee is “reborn,” they just aren’t going to get it.

Like it or not, most chefs don’t view coffee as an agricultural product or understand drinking coffee to be a culinary experience.

I had a conversation about coffee with the general manager of one of the other restaurants owned by the Blacks a year or two ago. He told me that he had made a stab at offering “gourmet” coffee.

He ordered four different coffees from an elite roaster (Intelligentsia, if memory serves). He prepared a special coffee menu and offered a hodge podge of coffees, espressos and cappuccinos to the public as an experiment. The experiment failed and that was that.

I think this sad situation will not change until the specialty coffee industry begins to understand that chefs are not cheap snarky bastards out to “dis” the creativity of great coffee roasters. When it comes to coffee, chefs are the unconverted. They need to be coaxed and cajoled and welcomed into the tent of the true believers. In order to change and be reborn, they need love, not disdain.

……

Here is a picture of Black Market in Garrett Park. The picture doesn’t do the place justice. Go and eat there. Speak gently to to the chef the word of great coffee.

It’s 100 degrees in Washington, DC and I am as lazy as a kid defying orders to pick up his toys.

Still, I promised myself I would write about Grape & Bean, the new wine and coffee bar located on South Royal Street in Old Town, Alexandria, Virginia. I visited this appealing little boite located in an historic building for the first time last week and was impressed as hell.

This tiny little place positions specialty coffee as the companion to all that is handmade and delicious in a way that I consider an absolute model for the specialty industry. In an accessible and yet stylish environment food, wine and coffee marry one another harmoniously.

The emotional tone of the place is set by owner David Gwathmey and Sheera Rosenfeld’s eagerness to share what they love, so the place is friendly, rather than snooty.

The point is to create an environment where all feel welcome to explore new tastes and new pairings of coffee, wine and food. Unusual social pairings are also on the menu. On my visit, David Gwathmey told me he loves seeing “freaky coffee people” chatting up upscale wine drinkers at the coffee bar.

Grape & Bean offers wines from around the world by the glass and by the bottle; Counter Culture coffees by the cup (brewed on a Clover), and as bean; equipment for brewing coffee at home; and an array of unusual food products, including exotic chocolate and spices and artisan breads baked daily by the talented baker from Restaurant Eve. (I bought a baguette and my husband, fondly known as the Bread Nazi, was blown away by this deeply fragrant, earthy, yet refined loaf.) Soon Grape & Bean will be offering customers at its wine bar and outdoor tables a simple sampling of foods made in house.

Grape and Bean is located in an historic building. Its culinary aesthetic is matched by a concern for design and architectural , as you can see from this collage lifted from another foodie blog: