Showing posts with label coffee. Show all posts
Showing posts with label coffee. Show all posts

Saturday, September 17, 2011

Crazy for Coffee

Photo: Whitney Browne
It's been a busy week.

I'm a full-time writer for Gilt Taste. Right now, I'm doing mostly product descriptions and vapid little blurbs. But, soon, I hope to do more thought-provoking pieces. Maybe even some food-focused travel writing? I want to visit the first Hawaiian sustainable oyster farm in Oahu. I want to eat noodles in a private box in Tokyo. I want to travel to Peru and eat guinea pigs err, local food at Machu Picchu. My hunger for food shall take me on many adventures.

For example, next week, Daniel and I are off to Seattle. I'm speaking at an annual Coffee Festival! We're going to brew lots of beans, meet other caffeine connoisseurs, and get the word out on the Champange of coffees: Kopi Luwak.

I've mentioned this coffee before in previous posts. It's rare. Super delicious. And, comes from civet excrement. Yes, that's right. It's the shittiest cup of coffee you'll ever try... in a good way.

The civets select the ripest, sweetest coffee cherries as their favorite food. For the civet, Arabica coffee cherries are a guilty pleasure... nature's best comfort food. The cat-like animal's digestive system rids the beans of any unwanted acidity. The result: a perfect cup of coffee with caramel notes that doesn't have that terrible bitter tinge.

Besides Seattle, we're also hosting an invitation only coffee tasting at Momofuku Milk Bar in Williamsburg. Christina Tosi is closing the storefront for two hours just for us! (She's the best!) We're going to brew and compare two East Java coffees  – Kopi Lanang (peaberry) vs. Kopi Luwak. We're also serving Milk Bar pastries!

I'll post pictures as soon as we wrap the tasting on Sunday. But, for now, keep your fingers crossed! Let's hope that our coffee dreams will percolate success for us!

Saturday, July 23, 2011

Blue Bottle Coffee

San Francisco-based Blue Bottle Coffee is expanding here in New York. People wait 30 minutes or more just for a Kyoto iced coffee or a perfectly pulled latte. And, the crazy thing is, the barristas' attention to detail really does make this $4.25 cup of coffee worth the wait.

But, if Williamsburg is too far for a caffeine fix. There's good news. Blue Bottle just leaked that there's a midtown location opening at Rockefeller Center. Also, this past Thursday, Vosges SoHo (located on Spring between Wooster and Greene) started carrying Blue Bottle Coffee. Now there's more than one local place to enjoy the Blue(s).


Posing in front of the Williamsburg Blue Bottle

Enjoying a freshly pulled Blue Bottle espresso shot at Vosges SoHo

Coffee brewers at Blue Bottle Williamsburg