gregs’s Recent Comments

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  Without Pausa?

  Lurisa water rocks. Of course, it comes out of the ground there. But I hear you.

  The Lavazza thing with their horrible pods is the big disappointment, however. After all, if Slow Food can support the Pausa Café efforts (as publicized at a Slow Food Nation coffee industry function) and sell the stuff at Torino's Eataly, one must assume that some serious concessions were made for Terre Madre's, well, concessions.

  -- ^sv

  On Where Slow Food Nation rejected bottled water, Terra Madre embraced it posted 1 year ago 3 Responses

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  Say "no" to the counter-revolution

  I've always considered Starbucks as the Mikhail Gorbachev of qualty coffee's perestroika. The parallel today being that Starbucks is about as relevant to the popular advancement of quality coffee as Gorby is to the advancement of the USSR-...er...I mean Russian-politik. But they certainly were instrumental in some of the early stages.

  If people want coffee-scented milkshakes lathered in syrup and whipped cream -- more power to them. I still believe there are millions of people who think they've experienced the pinnacle of what great espresso could be and yet haven't even come close, not making it past a Starbucks "double-tall, four-pump vanilla caramel macchiato" -- and that much is a shame. But there's going to be those who prefer liquid candy anyway. No harm done, and for the rest of us, the chances of finding at least adequate espresso has gone up all over this country. Net result: still pretty good.

  As for Illy, they're more like an American garage heavy metal band -- i.e., "We're big in Europe." Illy has set the standard for quality controls. And in Europe (cafés and beans), it shows in the product (e.g., their Espressamente cafés). But in the U.S., I don't care how air tight you make the can, shipping fresh roasted coffee thousands and thousands of miles from Trieste means serious flavor loss. As a result, I've found that Illy in the U.S. is a mere shadow of how it tastes in Europe.

  -- ^sv

  On Finding a proper coffee in the Texas hipster mecca posted 3 years ago 9 Responses

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  The espresso/Adrià mash up

  Btw, in case you missed a related story linking the two, Adrià's concoction of solidified espresso (called espesso) has just made it over the pond into the few U.S. Lavazza cafés:

  http://theshot.coffeeratings.com/2006/09/lavazza-espesso/On Lessons on how to live from the NYT food section posted 3 years, 1 month ago 9 Responses