LA Mill Coffee

Saw a show on the local Southern California PBS station last night, KCET, about LA Mill Coffee in Silverlake. It was on the Huell Howser "Visiting" series which is a show that features the places and faces of California.

Seems like this is a place worth checking out, with a big emphasis on quality and standards in food and coffee that would make any coffee snob proud. They don't even have filter coffee which is like a donut without a hole in the U.S. of A. Also did not see any sign of paper cups, another very good indicator of quality and standards. Even filter coffee is made one cup at a time. S

ome of the styles of coffee brewing seemed a little gimmicky, like the Japanese "syphon" method, but a place that's willing to spend about 10 to 15 minutes of a staff time devoting a crew member to brewing your coffee in a chemistry set complete with Bunsen burner shows commitment to the customer. No doubt you pay for it, though.

Espresso shots are made with the care and precision necessary to turn out quality, and no "barista" is permitted to work the espresso machine before they have undertaken 100 hours of training. So next time I'm in the area, I'll check it out. Anyone out there been already and got any comments to post? Go ahead.

The LA Mill Coffee is located at 1636 Silverlake Blvd in Los Angeles, and their website is http://www.lamillcoffee.com/.

Good Coffee and Dykes Too!

According to the comments that go with this photo at Flickr, Blend Coffee House and Cafe at 2327 E Burnside St in Portland, OR is the place to go if you take dykes with your coffee. In the words of Erika Moen she loves the place mostly because it's "Dyke Central". Erika, when you get to read this post, please post some comments about the coffee at Blend. From your photos, they are obviously good at latte art at Blend, so I'm intererested to know more. Erika is multi-talented and an accomplished cartoonist. Oh, and another thing, Erika, can we post a picture of you and one of your cartoon here?



Follow up: Erika agreed and here's a snapshot of one of her comics. Read the full comic by Erika Moen. And can you believe that Erika doesn't drink coffee! It takes all sorts, but Erika, send us your coffee snob friends who patronize Blend to let us know what we're missing in the coffee line.

McCafes from the Golden Arches

While in New Zealand recently I saw McCafe signs all over the country (yes, the burger chain) and just found information about McCafes on the New Zealand site for McDonalds. I wonder if coffee-loving New Zealand served as a test market as I am yet to see one in the U.S. and could not turn up a similar page on the McDonald's USA site. I know you can get "premium" coffee from McDonalds in the USA, but this is simply drip coffee, but in New Zealand it's the full-blown real McCoy of espresso coffee drinks. However, the above linked story published today in the Daily Tribune from Royal Oak, MI, indicates that they may have in fact been launched in the U.S. I guess I will have to venture in to see for myself. It can only be as bad as a Starbucks after all.

Coffee Shops Bring Community

I saw this article about a coffee shop called The Jidder Bean in a place called Connell in an area described as Tri-Cities Mid-Columbia. Keeping up with espresso coffee news is turning into a geography lesson too! Anyhow, it's yet another story I'm seeing played out again and again across the United States and the world: people look to coffee shops to build community. I guess that's why I hear about churches having "coffee socials" after their services. An interesting pattern so far, though, is that the coffee shops that appear in these kinds of articles are owner-operated, and in this case built with a lot of community involvement. I don't see stories like this about the opening of another Starbucks, or is it that Starbucks just hasn't reached these smaller communites yet and the locals are still waiting to be rescued by the big green logo? I know that you can get the "personal" treatment from Starbucks if you frequent the same store daily. One of my workmates picks up her caramel latte every morning at her local Starbucks in Ladera Ranch, CA, and she doesn't have to tell them her order or her name: they see her, and up comes her drink. It's the kind of thing that makes you feel a sense of community and belonging. She even gets her morning fix free of charge from time to time. I'm not sure if that's Starbucks policy or just something unique to this store, but it's the kind of treatment that's bound to buy loyalty and a sense of belonging. Anyhow, I personally am not looking to Starbucks for anything, mostly because every time I drink Starbucks coffee I see the drink being made in a way that just breaks all my rules for making great espresso coffee drinks, and literally leaves a bad aftertaste in my mouth. Apart from breaking my golden rule for making great espresso drinks, I think it's the excess of scalded milk that does that in my opinion. I just hope that the local coffee shops mentioned in stories like this don't just try to become replicas of Starbucks, trying to beat them at their own game, which they won't. Rather, I hope they set out to change the way espresso coffee drinks are made in the United States. They could do no worse than to start with my golden rule to making perfect espresso.

Caffeinated David Takes On Seattle's Goliath

Here's a story about an Israeli coffee company that is opening stores in the U.S. Can the fact that Starbucks pulled out of Israel in 2003 indicate anything about the chances of success for "Aroma" in the U.S.? I always used to think that Starbucks would not do well in New Zealand, the place of my birth, but each time I return there I seem to see more Starbucks stores that have sprung up, and which appear to be popular with teens. It's a fashion statement I guess, and of course Starbucks in New Zealand has "naturalized" to the extent that they offer the ubiquitous flat white in their New Zealand and Australian stores. But I have to take my hat off to the Israelis for defeating the goliath on their home turf.

Recommended reading: How to make good crema for your coffee drinks?

New business serves coffee in the hospital. How about that! Promise me if I ever end up in hospital that you'll put espresso in my IV drip, alright!

Recommended reading: How to make all sorts of espresso coffee based drinks for your IV drip.

Indian Coffee Chain Feels the Heat

I guess many of us traditionally associate tea with India, but working as I do in the IT industry with its current mania for "outsourcing" our jobs to cheaper Indian labor that we work side-by-side with at the office, I have learned that they appear to be even bigger drinkers of office coffee, as mediocre as it is, than my American co-workers. So here's some news on the coffee scene in India itself.

Popular coffee-brands and cafe chain "Barista" is looking for a buyer. Owned by Chennai based Sterling Infotech group, Barista's 130-odd espresso bars are up for sale and is also looking for new investors.

Barista had pioneered the branded coffee culture in India. However, it had lost over to arch rival Cafe Coffee Day owned by Bangalore based Amalgamated Coffee Bean Coffee
Trading with 300 and odd outlets to its credit...more

Here's the one simple step you can take to give your espresso coffee a flavor burst. I call it my golden rule of making espresso

A cup half full of hope:

Here's a story telling how one woman's dream of opening a coffee shop brings hope to the entire community. Is there community without a coffee shop at the center of it all? A coffee shop should be the modern gathering place for the community. Next time you rush in and out of Starbucks with your take-out paper cup, consider stopping, asking for your drink to be made "for here" (which I'm told by a friend who works at Starbucks signals to the barista that you want it to be served in a real ceramic cup - fancy that!), and stay and enjoy a few moments of community. Perhaps at first you won't talk to anyone, but do it a few times, and start to notice the regulars. After a while you just can't help but acknowledge someone that you see day after day. Your sense of community can grow from there. Or learn how to make your coffee at home and invite your friends over. Build friendships and civility around your cup of coffee.

Mary Petrella-Williams cracks a cold bottle of water, sweating from hacking plaster off an old store's walls. For two years now, that's what she has been doing, scrubbing and cleaning, tearing down and painting up her Midland Avenue building, trying to turn it from a long-defunct butcher shop into a gourmet coffee shop named the Karma Kafe.

The coffee shop will be the first of its kind in Midland. And, while it's Petrella-Williams' dream, in some ways, it represents the whole borough's hopes as well.There's a sort of joke about knowing a town has "made it" when a fancy coffee shop sets up, as such cafes seem to exist for the prosperous yuppie set. So, for a place that's moved from rusting steel mills to shiny-new educational enterprise, could the promise of quality lattes also signal a good economy on the horizon.