Do You Believe in God Shots?
The latest Ristretto looks at the coffee chapter in Nathan Myhrvold’s Modernist Cuisine.
- Oliver Strand
March 2011
25 posts
All the Pretty Coffees
Refinery29.com posts this epic slide show of the New York coffee scene: Saturdays Surf, Blue Bottle, Five Leaves, Variety, Ninth Street Espresso, Abraço, Café Grumpy, Miller’s Tavern, The Smile, Joe. It’s a dude’s-eye-view of what the site deems the city’s most stylish spots. Example? “Blue Bottle: A haven for pretty girls and their moleskins.”
- Oliver Strand
Short List
This useful coffee map from Mike White (a Times Topics: Coffee contributor) is a highly curated list of Manhattan spots within striking distance of the Northeast Regional Barista Championship, to be held April 8, 9 and 10 in New York’s Meatpacking District. It’s a short list, a baker’s dozen, of the places White feels is worth the journey.
For a New York coffee map from the New York Times with a wider reach click here. (It’s also a free app for the iPhone or iPad.)
- Oliver Strand
Billions of Pods
Nescafé will soon produce 2.5 billion “Dolce Gusto” coffee pods annually, according to the industry publication DBR. Dolce Gusto is Nescafé’s next-generation pod system, with products like “cappuccino” pods that produce a layer of milk foam on top of the coffee.
Nescafé’s Nespresso system already moves an estimated 4 billion pods every year.
- Oliver Strand
Panama Barista Champion
Congratulations to Francisco Atencio for becoming the 2011 Barista Champion of Panama. Francisco is now eligible to represent Panama at the WBC in Bogota.
- Mike White
Modernist Love
Mark Prince takes a look at the coffee section in Nathan Myhrvold’s Modernist Cuisine, likes what he sees. He appreciates what it says about espresso, wishes it spent less time on Kopi Luwak and agrees with the driving thesis, “a waxed poetic introduction to the joys of culinary coffee.”
As for the hefty sticker price? Prince writes, “I’d say $600 is a bargain for Modernist Cuisine.”
- Oliver Strand
Metalheads
Coava’s Keith Gherke is interviewed by Serious Eat’s Liz Clayton. The two discuss the Kone, the stainless steel filter for the Chemex that’s the newest must-have piece of coffee gear, and the Disk, for the AeroPress.
- Oliver Strand
Starting Young
Rueters reports that more 18- to 24-year-olds are drinking coffee every day. According to an article the wire service published over the weekend, the National Coffee Association’s National Coffee Drinking Trends 2011 reports that 40 percent of the demographic drinks coffee daily, an increase over 31 percent in 2010. Overall, 58 percent of those polled said they drink coffee every day.
- Oliver Strand
Once More, With Feeling
Congratulations to Olga Melik-Karakozova who has once again become the Barista Champion of Russia. Olga represented Russia at the 2007 WBC in Tokyo, coming in 25th, and now has the opportunity to improve her scores on the world stage in Bogota. For a brief introduction, watch this video clip on YouTube.
Lunch with Howard Schultz
This week’s “Lunch with the FT” features Howard Schultz noshing at Barney Greengrass. (The Starbucks CEO’s order: pickled herring, whitefish salad, salmon with eggs, bialy, fruit and babka for dessert.) Schultz is promoting his most recent book, Onward: How Starbucks Fought for Its Life without Losing Its Soul, and the interview has its intimate moments. Schultz recounts a moment in 1985, when he was raising money for il Giornalle, a chain of coffee bars, and his father-law-told him that he didn’t “have a job, just a hobby.” Schultz said, “I started to cry, I was so embarrassed.” Thirty-five years later, his hobby has a personal value of $540 million.
- Oliver Strand
Joe Heading to Brooklyn
Spotted on Eater: Joe will be a part of the DeKalb Market, a gastro-pile of shipping containers which aims to open on Flatbush Avenue at Dekalb Avenue this summer.
- Oliver Strand
Coffee: It's A Good Thing
Oslo Coffee Roasters gets the Martha Stewart treatment with this posting on the Everyday Food Blog by Merritt Watts. Teaser: looks like Oslo will be featured in the May issue.
- Oliver Strand
South Africa Barista Champion
Congratulations to Travis Scott of Woolworths Cafe for becoming the 2011 Barista Champion of South Africa. (In fact, he is the second champion barista to come from the drugstore chain.) Travis is now headed to Bogota to represent his nation.
Two-Time Winner
John Gordon is the UK Barista Champion for the second year in a row, earning himself the opportunity to compete at the World Championships in Bogota.
Swedish Crown
Congratulations to Alexander Ruas of Stockholm for winning the Swedish
Barista Championship. Alexander is now eligible to represent Sweden in
the World Championships in Bogota.
Great Dane
Congratulations to AnneStine Bae, of The Coffee Collective in Denmark, for winning the 2011 Danish Barista Championship. AnneStine will go on to represent the Danes at the World Championship in Bogota.
Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger
A resurgent Howard Schultz is the subject of the lead story in the Sunday Business section of today’s New York Times. The profile by Claire Cain Miller is titled “A Changed Starbucks. A Changed C.E.O.,” and it outlines what’s working (Via instant coffee), what flopped (the Pinkeberry-like Sorbetto), and what’s on the drawing board: some 1,500 locations in China by 2015.
- Oliver StrandTalking Heads
The Room for Debate forum of the New York Times is discussing “peak coffee.” Seven experts are weighing in, including Peter Giuliano and Daniel Humphries, to Mark Pendergrast and Taylor Clark.
The format: the expert posts an opinion, and readers post comments.
- Oliver Strand
"Peak Coffee"
This meaty feature in today’s New York Times by Elisabeth Rosenthal looks at declining Colombian yield and explores why coffee prices are spiking.
Global supply is down in the last three years when compared to the recent production history, and the article states that “purveyors fear that the Arabica coffee supply from Colombia may never rebound — that the world might, in effect, hit ‘peak coffee.’”
The article is a multimedia experience: short films, graphs, this slide show.
- Oliver Strand
