In the Blend at Birch Coffee

June 05, 2010 by Patrick LaForge in Coffee!, New York

It was painful to pass so close to Stumptown at the Ace Hotel without stopping, but I was glad I did, finding myself off the lobby of another boutique hotel, the Gershwin, in a different temple to caffeine -- Birch Coffee. I had been wanting to visit after noticing it on The Times's list of the best of the new coffee cafes. It was love at first visit. The decor gave me a warm feeling right away. True, you're not going to find a half-dozen varieties of obscure single origin coffees from as many countries, as you would a couple of blocks away, but there are chairs and stools, something Stumptown eschews. And food. And wine. And beer. And a lending library upstairs.

Springtime With Burundi Bwayi

March 21, 2010 by Patrick LaForge in Coffee!, New York

That was the first real winter we've had in New York City in a while, but I'm still glad to put the days of snow and winter jackets behind us. I've been engaged in a bit of apartment-organizing, having finally bit the bullet and paid for some storage space. There is some stuff we didn't want underfoot but I couldn't bring myself to throw it out. Some old computer equipment, some books, the comic collection from my misspent youth in the 1970s, my complete collection of Spy, furniture that we might put in a big summer house if we ever buy a big summer house. I fueled the weekslong effort with cups and shots of this coffee from Stumptown.

A Guide to Good New York Coffee

March 12, 2010 by Patrick LaForge in Coffee!, New York

Here's a great New York Times article last week by Oliver Strand about the growth of the culinary coffee scene in New York City. Check out the map of New York coffee bars that "not only produce extraordinary coffee at the highest standards, but also do so with consistency, day after day."

A Lost Twitter List, Beans From Kenya

March 06, 2010 by Patrick LaForge in Coffee!, New York

Before I get to the latest installment of my endless coffee quest, I must mourn the end of my brief reign as a Twitter list maven. At the start of this week, I made the mistake of using the latest crashy build of Firefox while playing around on the Tlists site with my lists.

A Guatemalan Roast From Grumpy

November 15, 2009 by Patrick LaForge in Coffee!, New York

Interesting things seem to be happening at one of my favorite New York coffee haunts, Café Grumpy. For one thing, the shop's official blog is looking flashier and busier. And Grumpy -- which turned me on to many of the best roasters in the country (Intelligentsia, Verve, Barismo, and Ritual) -- is now roasting selected coffees of its own at its Brooklyn location. I missed the Kenyan roast, but there still seemed to be an ample supply of this Finca Chichupac selection from Guatemala as well as a Finca Carmen from PanamaEl Salvador at the locally owned chain's Chelsea shop.

Direct From Panama Carmen Estate

October 25, 2009 by Patrick LaForge in Coffee!, New York

I haven't had much time to find new coffees lately. It has been a rather busy few weeks, with a trip to Cleveland related to "After Voices," my wife's new poetry chapbook from Burning River, a local press. We've also had illness in her family, grim news in the journalism world, birthday gatherings and more happenings than I can count. On the Cleveland trip, we hit the highlights, with readings and a visit to the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. We also stopped in at the local indie coffee chain, Phoenix Coffee, which also roasts its own beans. I'm kicking myself for not picking some up on the way out of town. Luckily, I still had this (shrinking) bag of beans from Stumptown.

A Return to Guatemala via Stumptown

October 11, 2009 by Patrick LaForge in Coffee!, New York

I've enjoyed a number of Guatemalan coffees -- the Finca La Folie from Ritual Roasters, Itzamna from Intelligentsia, the Nimac Kapeh and the Soma blend from Barismo -- so I picked up these beans on another side trip to Stumptown's Manhattan location at the Ace Hotel in the 20s. As always, the service was fast and pleasant, and I received a complimentary coffee because I was buying beans. (I was also playing around with Foursquare and its iPhone app, and discovered that there's a fierce battle to become "mayor" of this location.)

Coming Back Around to the Flor Azul

September 13, 2009 by Patrick LaForge in Coffee!

This direct-trade variety from Nicaragua was one of the earliest culinary coffees I wrote about on this blog, back in November 2008, when I first started to systematically evaluate the beans I was trying. Back then, I thought I knew a fair amount about coffee, but I really didn't know anything. My knowledge was limited to some basic presumptions I had about the geographic origins of various coffees. I didn't know much about individual growers or roasters. That level of detail was not readily available on the Web or on packaging until this third-wave era of coffee geekery with its focus on elevations, how beans are grown, dried and roasted, and the precise temperature settings on super-expensive coffee-making equipment. It used to be the specifics of coffee bean origins were known only to buyers, tasters and really obsessed fans.

A Side Trip to Stumptown, Manhattan

September 12, 2009 by Patrick LaForge in New York, Coffee!

People I know who have spent time in the Portland area have raved about Stumptown Coffee for years. They roast the beans right in the store! Nothing on the East Coast compares! So after the second-day-of-school parents' breakfast on Friday, my wife and I tagged along through the rain when another parent suggested we walk over to the new Stumptown outlet in the Ace Hotel in an area that some people are trying to call SoMa (for "South of Macy's") in the high 20s off Broadway. The shop was nicely appointed, with a classic feel, more upscale than your average grungy coffee shop. The baristas wore neckties and jaunty hipster hats (which were mocked by some on Twitter when I posted a quick slideshow on Posterous).