Jack's Coffee Lounge

Jack’s Coffee Lounge
1/31 Cambridge Road
Hamilton East

        All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy, so they say, and if it’s possible for this proverb to cross over into café-metaphor-land, then someone needs to start bringing the laughs to this place.

        Jack’s is a staple in Ham East. It’s been around for ages and has built up a steady set of regulars and nothing I say here is going to change any of that. But really, honestly, Grace on Braid’s brother café requires a gentle poke in the ribs.

        My friend and I pop down the road for a mid-morning coffee chat and are met by tables situated in the late winter sun. The woman behind the counter smiles, which is always a bonus, and when we sit down another staff member quickly comes to check that our table, which has just been moved, isn’t wobbly.

        We order a vegetarian savoury muffin, $4.50 (capsicum, tomato, sunflower seeds, topped with cheese) and a sweet muffin, $5, (black dorris plum and white chocolate) to share. The former comes with a lovely tart plum sauce and butter, the latter with yogurt and honey.

The muffins themselves are okay. They’re not dry, they’re not stale, but neither has any flavour other than the chunks of white chocolate buttons speckled through the sweet one. A bit of cheese mixed into the savoury muffin may have helped things along, but when you’re charging $4.50-$5 for a medium-sized muffin, you need to make it bang my mouth. These muffins don’t bang, they quietly knock before giving up and meekly excusing themselves down my oesophagus.

        The coffee follows suit. My long black, $3, is drinkable but not memorable. Again, it’s bland and lacks the body and pizazz of a truly fine espresso. My friend’s soy chai latte is hot and the milk comes out smooth, but she can only faintly taste chai over the soy milk.

        In the past, I’ve had grouchy service here and today’s staff are a solid improvement over past experiences. Otherwise, the food is nice but high prices mean one expects more from what is, in actuality, very meek fare. Kudos to Jack’s for the nice outdoor seating and occasional smile, boos for boring food and coffee that tastes like it’s on Prozac.

3 stars

Grace on Braid Review

Grace on Braid

29 Braid Road

St Andrews

 

It's Saturday morning and Grace on Braid is in full rock n' roll mode: joggers stopping in for a bit of liquid energy, young couples playing footsy beneath their eggs bennes and elderly patrons nostalgically checking out the collection of vintage crockery on the wall.

Upon entering, you know immediately that you have walked into the soul of a neighbourhood; it's the kind of place that knows most customers by name and where you feel comfortable taking your shoes off at the table. I feel like I come here all the time. Only I don't.

Nick orders the mushrooms on toast, big juicy slabs of button 'shrooms, completely swamped in a drunken deluge of port, cream, mustard and garlic, served on five-grain toast ($13.50). The mushrooms are perfectly cooked and not too rich, but the portion is quite small. It's lucky he got a side of eggs as well, or he might have started in on my plate.

My French toast comes with banana and passion fruit "ambrosia" and a vanilla maple sauce ($13.50). I love the word "ambrosia," it makes me think of clouds and cream and fruity heaven, which is pretty much the way this plate tastes. Again though, the portion is small. I get three pieces of toast and the equivalent of about a half a banana, sliced. It's a good start, but the dish is so delicious I would have loved a bit more of it.

Grace uses Rocket coffee, roasted in Hamilton. Not my absolute favourite brand, though the espresso here is passable. Nick has a mocha ($4.70) and it's creamy and cocoey and everything a mocha should be, but my long black ($3) doesn't have much flavour or depth, like a cup of Earl Grey where the teabag's been taken out too soon.

Parking is easy as the cafe is located in a small line of shops on a quiet street, and the staff are friendly. I wouldn't drive across town to come here, but if you are in the neighbourhood it's worth a peek. The sweet, slightly kitsch surroundings and tasty (though mildly over-priced) food make Grace on Braid a cosy spot, and their cakes looked good enough to warrant investigation.

3 stars

As a child, did you ever read those storybooks about fairy-folk who lived in towns built under hills and rocks and various other camouflaged bits of landscape? Mavis and Co is a bit like this.

The bleak-looking grey brick building, wedged between a video store and an accounting firm, suddenly transforms upon entry into a magical realm of cakes and coffee and small children fighting over caramelised onion and feta scones. It's also startlingly spacious inside, like one of those Harry Potter tents.

We manage to find an empty table amidst the hubbub. There are at least five staff members working out front this Saturday morning, and all of them are off their feet, but friendly as they can be in the mildly chaotic environment. We are even presented with complementary tasters of the apricot and almond oat cakes, which taste like muesli bars.

Nick orders the smoked fish hash with watercress, poached eggs and Hollandaise sauce ($21). It's beautiful when it arrives, and the smoked fish cakes are generously sized, but it's a little under-seasoned and Nick douses it with salt and pepper.

My fruit toast comes with ricotta, medjool dates, jam and honey ($12). Aside from the fact that the ricotta appears to be home-made, which is lovely, this dish is essentially a waste of money. The toast is extremely dry and the "dates," which were the main reason I bought the item, are simply slivers of a single date used as a garnish. This, however, is our only disappointment of the morning.

Mavis and Co uses Caffe L'Affare, roasted in Wellington, and it's deliciously prepared. I order two long blacks ($3.70 each) because one isn't enough.

The real reason to stop in at this charming little eatery, though, is the unbelievable cabinet selection. A cheesy scone stuffed with feta and onions, a sticky pecan cinnamon bun and a velvety custard square made it home with us, though I have ambitions regarding a certain rolled baklava, billowy chocolate meringues, colourful salads, espresso éclairs...

Anyway, this is the place to go for coffee and cake. The cooked menu is nice, but nothing better or worse than you can get anywhere else. Yet the baker at Mavis and Co is almost certainly of magical blood, for there are spells being cast in that pastry cabinet. 

3 1/2 twinkling stars

Mr Milton's Canteen

127 Alexandra St

Hamilton CBD

Walking into Mr Milton’s Canteen is like stepping into an Easter-themed cafeteria with nice lighting and waitresses wearing floral skirts. The walls are pastel green, the coffee cups egg shell blue and banana-rama yellow. Even the customers, and there are many this Friday morning, have somehow managed to match the friendly décor.

My friend orders the Mr Milton’s breakfast ($17.50), which comes with a soft boiled egg, toast, preserves, yogurt, orange juice and the coffee or tea of your choice. It arrives on a pretty wooden board and our only complaint is that the egg is slightly under-cooked, with some white bits still gooey. The menu also didn’t specify that it was soft-boiled, which some people might take issue with.

I opt for the bruchetta with mascarpone, feijoa jam and rhubarb compote ($7.50). Somehow, the toast tastes like a croissant. I don’t know how they do this, but I must find out how, as it is divine: flaky and buttery and perfect with cream-cheesy mascarpone and the feijoa jam, which is the best jam I’ve tasted in yonks. I ask the waitress where they get it and she tells me that all preserves are made in-house. I make a mental note to bribe the chef for the recipe at my next visit.

The coffee here is nice, but not as good as at sister café Hazel Hayes. My friend’s flat white isn’t quite hot enough, and my long black ($3.70) is touch over extracted. Still, the well-priced, well-prepared and well-presented food more than makes up for these slight imperfections.

Staff are friendly, prices are reasonable but parking is a bit of an issue on weekdays (you will most likely need to pay). However, if the weather’s good, put on your trainers and pretend you’re on an Easter egg hunt: Mr Milton’s is a fine find indeed.

4 stars

Grey Street Kitchen

It’s a bright, chilly Sunday morning when my boyfriend and I nip into the Grey Street Kitchen, our breath following in cloudy trails behind us. We are so relieved to find the place heated that I am tempted to give them five stars on the spot.

Inside, the GSK is packed with tables full of university lecturers, the odd student, and those who have wandered in after browsing Grey St’s Sunday market stalls. It’s loud in here, which is one of the only reasons I don’t come very often.  Hard walls, hard furniture, not a scrap of fabric in sight to absorb the sound; this is not the place to come if you are after an intimate conversation.

My boyfriend orders the Eggs Benedict with roast vegetables ($17.50). It arrives stacked on its plate, looking lovely all smothered in warm hollandaise sauce. For some reason, however, the chef has decided to put what tastes like pickled capsicum on it. It’s an interesting idea, but it doesn’t work. The flavour takes over, and while the hollandaise is nice and buttery you almost can’t taste it.

I opt for the day’s breakfast special: gluten-free ricotta hotcakes with caramelized apple, raisins and maple syrup ($14). The words “gluten free” usually put me off, but the rest of the description makes my mouth water, and after a few bites I forget that the dish was intended for a Celiac sufferer. Almond meal, I am told, has been used instead of wheat flour, and the hotcakes are moist and crumbly, drunk with syrup, and too rich much for me to finish. The apples are a tad sweet and make my teeth cringe, but otherwise it’s a delicious plate of food.

The coffee, in my experience, isn’t consistent here.  I’ve had both wonderful and average cups depending on who’s behind the machine, and today’s long black ($3.50) is the latter. It’s drinkable, but I don’t order a second.

Essentially, the food here is nice, the coffee is average to good, the staff are friendly even when it’s busy, and there is plenty seating both inside and out. One of my favourite things to do here is simply stare out the window at passers-by. Call me a voyeur, and I’ll tell you that a decent vantage spot for people-watching can be a café’s best selling point.

3 ½ stars

Just a few bits and pieces about our drug of choice...

Dora’s Cafe
105 Collingwood St

Dora’s is my local. There is possibly something inherently biased about critiquing the cafe you go to almost every day, where you know the staff well enough to order simply by walking in the door and saying “hi,” and your tacky cartoon sketches are pinned to the notice board.
But why should this little gem of an eatery miss out on a review, just because I happen to spend half my paycheck there every week?
With this attitude in hand, I order a bowl of their self-proclaimed, “probably the best in town,” macadamia nut muesli ($10.50), which I have never tried. It is most definitely the best I’ve had, and I’m not just saying this because I hope Misty will make me a free long black ($3.50).  Macadamia nuts, pumpkin seeds, sunflower seeds, cashews, and other bits and bobs all toasted in honey and served with creamy plain yogurt and berries, yum.  It’s gluten free as well, if you swing that way.
My friend takes on the salmon bagel ($10), which is basic and comes with cream cheese and capers. The bagel itself isn’t amazing or anything, but then again, you need to fly to the States if you want amazing bagels. You get plenty of salmon though, and lots of cream cheese.
The espresso here rarely fails to impress and if Misty, the barista, is in a good mood, it comes with cheeky comments and a heavy dose of banter. Grant, the manager, is a sweetheart. You get the feeling when you walk into this place that you’ve entered something special, a community of sorts. Don’t come here for exotic food, fancy plating, or chic décor. Come here because you want genuine warmth and a reliably good coffee. It’s kind of like eating at home, only much better.

In a class of its own

If you're like me, then you get really excited when you come across ways of making much-loved (but terribly fake) processed foods at home, where you know exactly what's going into the jar. Home made Nutella, anybody??!!!!! Here's the recipe:
http://punchfork.com/cXmWXu

Hazel Hayes

587 Victoria St

So you take a café, tuck it into a crack-in-the-wall spot on the seedy end of Victoria Street next to the adult shops, make your signage really small and don’t mention the word “café” in your name. You’re doomed, right?

Not, apparently, if you are Hazel Hayes. This place does the implausible, and it’s packed on a weekday morning. The north end of downtown Hamilton is dying at the moment; shops all around the café are shutting up, and yet Hazel Hayes is hopping with all sorts: businessmen and women, two young mothers with children, an older lady I recognize from Raglan, and it feels the way a downtown cafe should.

Nick orders the homemade hash browns with poached eggs, Portobello mushrooms, spinach and hollandaise sauce ($15.50). The hash browns turn out to be scrumptious balls of mashed potato and herbs, fried with crispy outers and creamy inners, delicious. His eggs are underdone with some of the whites still runny, but the hollandaise is excellent.

I made up my mind on a menu item, but when I got to the counter to order I spotted a vegetarian quesadilla in the cabinet, and I’m glad I did. For a miserly $7, I got a gorgeous toasted wheat tortilla pregnant with buttery, decadent, roast vegetables (who knew vegetables could be decadent?) with just enough seasoning to keep it from being bland.

The menu here, as well, deserves an honourable mention for creativity: free range black pudding, anyone?

Yummy Supreme brand espresso (my long black was $3.50) and cute retro décor complete this place. Restraint has been shown though, and you don’t feel (too much) like you’re at nana’s house circa 1955. Adorable coffee cups in pastel green with gold trim, a little silver “Queen Charlotte Sound” teaspoon and toy cars for table numbers, the details really make this place.

Staff were busy, but friendly, and parking wasn’t too hard since this is the unpopular end of Victoria St.

We will definitely be back.
4 ½ stars

Hydro Cafe

33 Jellicoe Drive

First of all, major kudos to the staff at this Ham East café. As soon as we were through the door, there was a “hello,” and the two girls remained totally attentive the entire time. Granted, there weren’t many other diners to pay attention to, but we all love smiling wait staff, don’t we?

The coffee was also excellent, in fact I ordered a second long black ($3.50), because near-perfect espresso, like sunshine and the opportunity to sleep in, is never to be wasted. Hydro uses Wellington-based Supreme coffee, which I’d never tried before but plan to seek out in the future after this initial experiene.

Unfortunately, two (really important) things let this place down. The décor is bleak and a little cold, like you’re sitting in a hastily renovated garage with very little colour. A couch or two would go a long way here, especially since the place is so big. It’s in a lovely spot and there’s so much room to work with. Why don’t they make the most of it?

And the food: overpriced and almost cold. Nick orders the Hydro Vege Stack, a compilation of wholegrain toast, poached eggs, hashbrowns (in this case it’s those boxed hashbrowns you buy frozen, though Nick secretly thinks those are the best ones so we won’t mark them down for this), pesto and chutney ($19). It’s expensive for a vegetarian breakfast, and his food is the same temperature as the table it’s sitting on. There isn’t very much of it either.

I go for the Eggs Florentine ($20), which is really just eggs bene with salmon: ciabatta toast, baby spinach, house-smoked salmon, two poached eggs and hollondaise. Again, the eggs are not hot, possibly from sitting on cold salmon for too long before being served…something which has also cooled down the toast. The portion is medium-sized for a $20 price tag, and for some reason the salmon is sugary-sweet.

We came here two years ago and loved Hydro for its big portions and high-quality food. Something has gone amiss. In a (fragmented) sentence: Great service, delicious espresso, boring ambiance, and overpriced food (the toilets were also a bit stodgy).

2 ½ stars 

Killer Coffee Company

A Wintec media arts graduate has developed her own coffee brand in Hamilton, with a bit of dramatic flair.

Micah Puklowski, who completed a Masters of Arts in screenwriting last year, dubbed it the Killer Coffee Company, slogan: “You can sleep when you’re dead.”

She and her brother Finn came up with the idea to go along with the imported sweets shop they plan to open next month in Frankton.

“We love coffee,” Micah explains, “and it goes well with chocolate.”

In keeping with the theme, she and her brother plan to sell chocolate bullets and hand grenades as part of the marketing for Killer Coffee. Micah personally designed the (slightly creepy) branding.

The beans themselves are Fair Trade, organic, and processed by an artisan coffee roaster here in Hamilton. You can find them online at unitedsweetsofnz.co.nz, or at United Sweets of New Zealand, 202 Commerce St, from May 1st.

Metropolis Caffe
211 Victoria St

Perhaps “Meh”-tropolis would be a better name for this place? I feel kind of sorry for the people who work here. If there’s one thing I’ve learned from being in the hospo business, it’s this: if the service is bad, the staff hate their job. I have yet to find another reason for sullen or snobby wait staff (other than PMT, or completely vile, sadistic customers). If people like their job, and they like who they’re working with, it shows.



Enough of the management lecture. I order the potato scone with cannellini beans in tomato sauce topped with a poached egg ($15). The scone is nice, a bit like a fluffy English muffin, but the beans and tomato sauce taste canned. Maybe they are, and maybe they aren’t, but they are boring none the less. The egg is a teensy bit undercooked, with a bit of white still runny.



My mate has already had breakfast, so she opts for the tiramisu. It looks lovely, but I’m pretty sure it was made several days ago. The cakey part is dry – tiramisu is supposed to be almost soggy with coffee and liqueur, and the coffee flavour doesn’t really stand out at all. In the end, it’s bit like eating sweet, chocolate-flavoured Styrofoam with whipped cream. A shame, because if they’d just replaced it this morning (instead of trying to save money by stretching the last batch for an extra day), it might have been quite good.



The coffee is nice, and my friend’s latte comes to a very reasonable $3.50 (as does my long black). Beans are provided by Roasted Addiqtion, an Auckland-based coffee house which air-roasts its high quality product, and the barista here handles them with finesse.



To be completely straight-up, I’m not sure why this place has lasted so long. I’ve heard good things about the dinner menu, though I’ve never brokered the courage to try it, so perhaps they’ve got different people on at night? But the waitress was nervous and under-trained. She took twenty minutes to come to the table, and by the time she did I was already heading up to the counter to order. I think she was scared of me. Am I scary? Don’t answer that. She didn’t talk to us at all, and her boss man seemed grumpy…remember what I said before?



Go here for a coffee, but if you’re hungry, head two doors down to Scott’s Epicurean. The food’s better, and, if you’re neither vile nor sadistic, the wait staff will smile at you.



2 stars (because the coffee was good)

Interview with Raglan Roast's Bobo!

Bobo is eating a sandwich when I arrive, soaking wet from an autumn downpour, at his fragrant shed of a roasting house. Raglan Roast is not a pretentious place. There is an elaborate Sharpie mural on the plywood wall. Wooden op-shop chairs reupholstered with burlap coffee sacks cradle the rears of stout-sipping grizzled surfers, and a section of the roasting machine appears to be patched with duck tape.

This machine is marvellous. It looks like something out of a 19th century chemistry lab, it smokes like my wig-wearing, motorcycle-driving Bavarian grandmother, and it produces some of the best beans this country of coffee-roasters-galore can cup together.

Bobo fires it up with a cigarette lighter. The rumble his roaster makes as its barrel turns and its fan blows is of an industrial nature, at odds with the arty surroundings. All the doors are closed against the rain, and the little room quickly fills with coffee smoke - a smell which resembles burning wet hay. Most coffee roasters in New Zealand use either conduction heating (spinning hot metal plates which stir the coffee, toasting it by touch) or convection (fans blowing hot air into the beans like a popcorn popper). Bobo's does both, resulting in an even roast which is neither burnt nor dull.

"It's a lot like wine making," Bobo says, explaining how he is constantly developing flavours and aromas - trying to achieve the perfect blend of origins. Raglan Roast's beans, mostly fair-trade, come from a list of locales which ring bells of perfection in a coffee-fiend's mind: Sumatra, Ethiopia, Columbia, Uganda...It's no guess why their brews are so ballsy on the tongue.

"I want people to be able to drink one cup and know that they've had a cup of coffee."

In an old grey sweatshirt and slightly baggy jeans, Bobo is of that breezy breed for which Raglan is famous. Thirty-something, he speaks with the ease and flow of someone who spends his days making coffee and making people feel comfortable - both of which he's very good at. He started the company five years ago after spending most of his twenties in bed with an autoimmune disorder. Allowed out for a single hour each day, he would make his way down to a friend's roasting house and help out - earning free coffees when he pitched in.

As his health slowly improved, Bobo saved up his sickness benefit and splashed out on a roaster with his friend Tony. They bought it on Trademe for a scanty $1,875, and Raglan Roast was born.

Bobo prides himself on the fact that his two hole-in-the wall coffee houses (you can't call them cafes because there isn't any food), one in Raglan and one in the sneeze-and-you-miss-it hamlet of Te Uku, have become social magnets for their respective communities. Other cafes in Raglan cater to tourists, but Raglan Roast's (or simply "Bobo's," as the locals call it) location down a back alley, smashed in the wall beside a surf shop, makes it easy to miss if you don't know what you're looking for.

The company offers three roasts: Brown Lightning, a punch-in-the-face caffeine junky's dream, named for the effect the original blend had on people's metabolic processes;. Mocha Java, a nod to the traditional Yemenis brew, with less caffeine and a more mellow flavour; and Daganic, which is 100% organic and fair trade.

In a few months, Raglan Roast will be invading the capital. "We've bought a building in Wellington, which gives us a chance to experiment and try things out." But Bobo assures that it will be of a similar vein to his roasting house in Raglan - no food, just coffee, pure and anything but simple.

French Tart Cafe

548B River Road, Fairfield

We're starving. Our friend moved into a new flat, and the author got a bit more sozzled than she had planned last night- meaning she had two drinks (it doesn't take much when you're only 160cm tall). But there is one bright little light at the end of any big night out in Hamilton- it's called the French Tart Cafe, and it cooks the kind of breakfasts that make your cholesterol-o-meter go BEEEEEP! and your taste buds squeal like little girls as they wallow in cream, salt, butter, cheese...sorry, I'm just having a bit of a moment...

TLR orders Eggs Benedict with salmon ($15.50). It's served up on thick slabs of crusty bread with wilted spinach, wedges of satisfying salmon, and a refreshingly tangy hollandaise. It drives me nuts when hollandaise tastes like mayonnaise out of the jar- gelatinous and bland- but this stuff has just the right amount of lemon bite to keep it from being sickly-rich.

However, I often find that the true judge of a breakfast chef's mastering of the culinary arts lies in scrambled eggs. If someone can take a dish which every man, woman, and inebriated uni student can whip up, and make it into something a customer is willing to fork out $14.50 for (as I did this morning), then s/he can truly be lauded as an expert. I don't know who the chef is at the French Tart, but s/he is most definitely one of these. Their plates of scrambled eggs, roasted herb tomatoes, toasted and buttered Volare bread, and button mushrooms giddily drowning in cream (though you can get bacon instead) are so good that I must now admit something: I have never been able to order anything else off the menu.

Oh yes, and the coffee: some of the best in town. It's Fixation, air roasted (that's usually a good thing) in Tauranga and always handled perfectly by the baristas at the French Tart. I order two long blacks ($2.50 each), and TLR almost orders one- he doesn't even like coffee.

I've never been to France. I have no idea if this is "authentic," and the staff don't look "tarty" at all- or French for that matter. But the food is bloody good, the coffee is excellent, and their custard squares are not too be ignored if you have even the slightest bit of room left in your arteries. This place is not for the faint-hearted (in more ways than one), but their prices are great, the people are friendly, and the food speaks for itself- no matter what language you're talking.

4 stars

I'm going to be doing weekly cafe reviews here on Renaissance Girl- let me know if there's a cafe in Hamilton you'd like reviewed, and I'll do my best to get there!

Sugar Bowl Cafe

Maeroa Rd, Maeroa

I’ve always had a sweet spot for the Sugar Bowl. The staff are friendly, especially that cute barista dude, the food never fails to look like a friggin’ calendar shot when it arrives in front of you, and its location makes it one of those places you’d like to take your mom out for brunch.

But this is a cafe review, not a PR piece, so here we go:

The Lone Ranger ( TLR- my boyfriend- he looks a bit like Chuck Norris except way better) orders the Vegetarian Fry up ($20), which arrives piled high with creamy mushies, sourdough toast, fried potatoes, scrambled eggs, spinach, and pesto-topped roast tomatoes.

I have a Salmon, pesto and spinach omelette ($16.50)- but wait! TLR has ordered the wrong one! I am thus presented with a pesto, spinach and roast tomato omelette, which makes me very sad indeed. Luckily, cute barista dude sprints out with a slab of home-baked salmon, on the house. I swipe a fork-full of TLR’s mushrooms as cold redemption. They’re really, really good.

Now the coffee...I don’t like Weka beans very much. I know this is upsetting, and I should really be encouraging anyone who roasts coffee with passion in Hamilton- a relative wasteland when it comes to quality local beans (Raglan Roast being in a class of its own stellar self). I don’t know what it is- too dark, perhaps? But I’m not going to lie, I don’t know much about coffee roasting, and I’m not about to pretend that I do. I just find that Weka comes out a little acrid. Not unbearable- but a six out of ten on average.

Barista dude manages a perfectly drinkable long black ($3), however, despite this (minor) handicap. The crema is smooth, there isn’t too much water, and he hasn’t over-extracted it. Even TLR, self-professed coffee hater, has a sip and doesn’t make that squinchy, “I just sucked a rotten lemon,” face.

When asked what his favourite part of the meal was, TLR replies, with classic Kiwi eloquence: “the potatoes and the mushrooms, because they tasted good.” Fair enough. My omelette, for the record, was lovely and fresh, without the kg of cheese you often get in cafe versions of the dish. It came with a colourful salad (corn, mesclun, red onion and so on) on top, which made it pretty as a painted pony.

Parking is a cinch, the location is quiet and relatively peaceful, and there’s a feijoa tree overhanging the parking lot where, if you dare, you might swipe a few when no one’s looking (though you didn’t hear it from me).

3 1/2 Stars

What makes a bean good?

I had an odd request yesterday when I walked (ok, trudged- it was 8am and I'd been up since 6), into my local cafe. The barista had found out where I worked, and what kind of beans we use, and then he asked me to buy him some. "What?!" I thought, "He works in a cafe that uses perfectly nice beans- why would he want to spend money on the ones we sell? And at almost $40 a kilo at that?!" He must have been huffing too many espresso fumes. I know they do funny things to my brain by the end of the day.

He explained that he likes the taste of Havana beans (the ones we use- roasted by some crazy guys in Wellington) more than the ones they use at his cafe, and he wanted to take Havana away on holiday with him at Easter.

Confession time: I don't like Havana beans much, even though I REALLY want to. This isn't because they aren't good quality- they're just different. I find them bitter, other people find them fierce.

Anyway, so that got me wondering: what makes a good bean?

You need to start with Arabica (or the rarer Typica or Bourbon) plants, of course. I'm not being a snob here either- it's well understood that Arabica is bred for taste, and Robusta for caffeine content and mass production. Nothing personal.

The beans should be grown at the right altitude (this helps ensure that the they don't get too hot or grow too fast and absorb heaps of water- same thing as when strawberries take in too much water and taste bland).

They need to be picked when they're perfectly ripe, and handled carefully so that they arent damaged.

One coffee writer compares coffee cultivation to raising kids- as long as you use the right plants, the beans will start out good. It's then up to the people handling the beans once they're separated from the tree to ensure they don't get damaged (e.g. Don't throw them around too much or they will get bruised...).

But what about after they head out into the big, wide world?

Individual roasters might start out with similar beans- or even, perchance, beans from the same plantation. Yet, something happens which makes Havana beans more preferable to my barista than the ones they use in his cafe, and it has little to do with the initial product.

Both use Fair Trade beans from South America (and yes, there are differences between one coffee-growing region in S America and another, but we're not going to go into that much detail). Both roast in large batches, and both do so here in New Zealand. His cafe's brand vaccuum-packs their beans, Havana doesn't (actually, they would if our owner was willing to pay for it...).

Havana, however, have built their own custom European-style hot air roaster (pictured here), while the other company uses a traditional drum roaster (which, Havana argues, over-bakes the beans). The difference is basically that Havana's beans cook more evenly, and retain more moisture. But whatever, really- I still prefer the other brand's taste, for some reason which is probably best explained by personal quirk rather than scientific analysis. Maybe I like "over-baked" beans, and my barista likes his "moist." What implications this has for my future parenting style, I remain unsure...

Coffee Bean Layout

1) Center Cut

2) Bean (Endosperm)

3) Silver Skin (Testa, Epidermis)

4) Parchment Coat (Hull, Endocarp)

5) pectin Layer

6) Pulp (Mesocarp)

7) Outer Skin (Pericarp, exocarp)

Random Coffee Facts

This morning I was a spaceball and forgot my wallet. Being the coffee freak that I am, my immediate reaction was not the (possibly more rational) thought of "oh, crap, I'm at the petrol station and there are 15 irritable commuters behind me waiting while I fluff around in my purse for spare change," but rather "OH, CRAP! How am I going to pay for my coffee??!!"
Thankfully my local java junky reload station (Dora's Cafe, on Collingwood St- GREAT coffee) was feeling compassionate and allowed me to put my double shot on layby.
Anyway, here are some random coffee facts, stolen from The Oatmeal's website:
1) Legend has it that the effects of coffee were first discovered by an Ethiopian shepard who noticed his goats going apesh*t after eating some little berries.
2) In the beginning, coffee beans were rolled in animal fat by African tribespeople and eaten as a kind of Redbull-esque energy bar.
3) The rise of Islam is largely to thank for the spread of the wonder bean throughout the world- the religion doesn't allow for the consumption of alcohol, but coffee is considered an ok drug of choice.
4) All coffee beans grow in a belt between the Tropics of Cancer and Capricorn.
5) In 1675, the King of England banned cafes, as he feared they were becoming popular meeting points for people who wanted to overthrow him.
5) There are two main types of coffee plants: Arabica and Robusta. Arabica is inarguably better quality in terms of taste, but Robusta contains 50% more caffeine and is often mixed with Arabica in order to provide a stronger "hit."
6) Coffee plants can grow to 10 meters tall.
7) The coffee bean is the second most commonly traded commodity on Earth. Oil is the first.
8) Just to get our facts strait: Espresso is not a type of coffee bean, roast, or blend. It is simply the product of preparing ground coffee in a particular way (though the grind used for espresso-making is finer than that used for filter coffee and other methods).
9) The term "Americano" comes from American GI's during WWII who would dilute their espresso with water in order to make it less bitter.
10) Finland consumes more coffee per person than any other country.

If you're interested in the story of how coffee has traveled the world, read this book...

Stewart Lee Allen is a really entertaining writer- even if you're not a particularly devoted caffein junky, you'll probably think this is a fun read. His journey follows the path that coffee beans took out of Ethiopia and you'll be learning all kinds of java facts without feeling like you're reading a text book :-)

This week I want to talk about COFFEE! Where does it come from, how is it processed, what makes it orgasmic versus what makes it make your mouth twist up, what are some of the different brewing methods, and is there really an art to the perfect espresso shot?