Blue Bottle Coffee, Manhattan
Blue Bottle has been one of the bigger success stories in specialty coffee, garnering press and praise since the early 2000s, starting with its locations in San Francisco. Since then, they’ve expanded rapidly, with recent profit growth of 50% each year. Blue Bottle excels in creating and telling its own trend-setting story about coffee, using...
Solde Kaffebar – Malmö, Sweden
This post is incredibly long overdue given that one of the first people to welcome me to Sweden was Dan Stenqvist, blogger, barista extraordinaire, and roaster for Solde Kaffebar in Malmö. It’s been about nine months since I arrived, and I think I’ve been to Solde more often than any other coffee bar in Malmö....
Coffee Collective – Copenhagen
Coffee Collective is a world renowned Danish cafe and roastery, part-owned by 2006 World Barista Champion Klaus Thomsen, along with Peter Dupont, Casper Rasmussen, and Linus Törsäter. Their coffee is highly regarded and I’ve seen their bags proudly displayed like trophies behind the bar or in the back rooms of specialty cafes around the world....
Cafe de l’Ambre: Old School Coffee in Tokyo, Japan
Cafe de l’Ambre is a quirky Tokyo legend, located a few zigzagging side-streets away from the main shopping area at Ginza. You may have seen it mentioned before when Australian barista champion Scott Callaghan wrote about his trip around the world here. The coffee bar and roastery has been around since the late 1940s and...
Lugo Coffee
Lugo is a well appointed cafe in the huge Garden 5 shopping mall, complete with their own roaster in shop, La Cimbali and Ditting espresso set up, as well as kit for hand drip. Combining the two main Korean cafe trends, they offer all their coffees (around ~10 single origins) as either espresso shots or...
Choi Ga
I’ve been keeping an eye out for good coffee on the northeast side of Seoul, but so far I’d only been able to find Star City’s Star Kitchen and Lotte Mall’s Cantata kiosk, which are above average, but nothing to go out of your way for. Then I came across a post at Jihye Chang’s...
Coffeelab
Coffeelab is a quirky specialty cafe located in Hongdae and run by Bang Jong Koo, 2005 Korean Barista Champion. I’ve only been there twice – the first time just long enough to drop in and try a single espresso. I finally made it back this weekend. Click below for my thoughts and photos. Click here...
Coffee Factory
Coffee Factory is one of my favorite cafes in Korea. It’s in the popular Samcheongdong neighborhood around Gyeongbokgung palace, the Presidential Blue House, and a number of foreign consulates. It’s an upscale but unpretentious area that blends traditional and modern Korean culture with its various art galleries, old and new architecture, tea houses and coffee...
Republic of Coffee – Kenya & Costa Rica
I received these two coffees from Lee Jong Hoon (Korean Barista Champion ’09) and his girlfriend and partner Seol Mi Gyeong, who run Republic of Coffee together. Two great people and very dedicated coffee professionals that I feel privileged to have met! The Kenya AA Top Mchana is complex and fruity. Dry red wine is...
9 Days in LA Part Three: Intelligentsia
Last winter I was able to go home to Los Angeles with Claire for a quick 9 day holiday vacation with my family. Here’re some pictures of our visit to Intelligentsia’s Venice and Silver Lake locations. I feel like everyone knows about Intelligentsia already and a review would be redundant, so I’ll just share some...
Apgujeong Coffee House
Heo Hyeong Man, owner of Apgujeong Coffee House, is well known as one of the oldest artisanal coffee roasters in Korea. His tiny shop is all business with barely enough room for the large coffee roaster, burlap sacks of coffee beans, a few small coffee trees growing in planters, and three tables. There’s nothing showy...
9 Days in LA Part One: LAMILL
Despite ambitious plans to hit a different cafe on each day of our Christmas trip to LA, it turns out that there’s more to life than coffee(!). Visiting your home town for nine days is really not enough time to see everyone and do everything, though it was enough time to get a $446 speeding...
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