A Roadtrip to Coffee in Reno, Nevada
Reno, Nevada, calls itself the ‘biggest little city in the world,’ so I shouldn’t have been surprised during a recent road trip to find not one, but two specialty coffee roasters had set up shop – Hub Coffee Roasters, and Magpie Coffee Roasters. Better known for its gambling industry, I came to town expecting what...
Kuma Coffee Roaster, Seattle
Two delicious coffees arrived in the mail recently, courtesy of Mark at Kuma Coffee. Kuma is a Seattle based roaster that’s been around since 2007: “In 2007 I started a small hobby business in which I roasted only a few pounds at a time for friends, local grocery stores and farmers markets. By 2009 we...
Tonx Coffee Subscription Discount
Tonx Coffee is offering a $10 discount on subscriptions. If you’ve followed the specialty coffee industry for any length of time, you’ve probably seen or heard the name Tonx float around. Tonx is Tony Konecny: Tony began his descent into coffee madness as a barista and then head roaster at Seattle’s seminal Victrola Coffee and...
Untitled at the Whitney Museum
The Whitney museum has surprisingly good coffee, a fact I discovered with the help of Oliver Strand’s contribution to the ever-useful New York Times’ app, “The Scoop.” Past the long lines for museum admission that wrap out the door, you’ll find Untitled, a restaurant and coffee bar down stairs serving a refined take on diner...
Toby’s Estate, Brooklyn – Public Cupping Sessions
Toby’s Estate is a new cafe and roastery in Brooklyn, with Australian roots. I’ll be writing more about them later (the short review: nice coffee, great sandwiches, cool space), but for now I wanted to share that they are offering public cuppings every Wednesday. I went a few weeks ago and had a great time....
Single Origin Coffee, LA Farmers Market at 3rd and Fairfax
Coffee news in recent weeks has been dominated by the highly anticipated opening of Handsome Coffee Roasters in Downtown LA. But not to be overshadowed, another noteworthy cafe called Single Origin just opened its doors. This new shop is in the Farmers Market at 3rd and Fairfax, next to the Grove shopping mall, and it’s...
Blue Bottle Coffee, Chelsea
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...
La Frontera, Peru – Counter Culture Coffee
La Frontera, as the bag explains, is the name given to a collection of small family coffee farms in Peru near the border with Ecuador. In 2007, we began our work with five small cooperatives of farmers in a valley with no name, calling the project Valle del Santuario. It has been our most successful...
9 Days in LA Part Two: Aroma Coffee & Tea
Aroma Coffee & Tea is right off the 101 freeway, on a quiet neighborhood block full of little restaurants, thrift shops, and boutiques built in re-purposed existing homes. The residential locale, house-like interior proportions, and foliage covered outdoor seating makes it feel like a well kept neighborhood secret. That is, until you see the line...
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...
