Another Fine Trimethyldioxypuri...Oh, Never Mind.
So, yeah, we flaked last week. Holiday weekends are always a good excuse, right?
We've always been of the opinion that people who do an excess of reviews (movie critics, people employed as food critics, etc) often lack perspective and, therefore, the ability to make their judgments relevant to the common reader. Simply put, if you watch as many movies as Roger Ebert or eat as much great food as Michael Bauer (who we love, btw), you're just making your determinations from an entirely different plane.
Your Trimethyldioxypurist? Well, we'll admit, we're a full-blown caffeine addict. Hard core. As in, drinking strong coffee brings us to a semblance of a normal human being. We need it to function. We may be coming at it from a different place than some of you.
Note to fellow caffeine addicts with desk jobs: watch those pre-coffee emails. Maybe hold off on communicating during the hours of 3:30 p.m.-5 p.m. as well, unless you have time to work in a second cup. (Note to self: do same in comments sections).
We won't lie: caffeine fiends can be testy. Caffeine fiends can be very possessive and protective. Caffeine fiends can even be a little overly grateful sometimes. In the interest of full disclosure, examples follow of why you might not trust us at times, though it is certainly not the Trimethyldioxypurist's intent to mislead anyone.
Two mini-reviews and more incoherent rambling after the jump.
Testy
We visited a coffee joint on Polk Street called Quetzal a number of weeks back as we were walking to the courthouse to do our civic duty (jury duty). The interior is nice; the operation was clean. Quetzal roasts Fair Trade coffee, which we are great fans of. Seemed like the kind of place we can usually get into.
But there was only one person in line in front of us -- and we only ordered a drip. And it still, somehow, it seemed to take forever. We asked a question about the coffee, for purposes of fleshing out the review, and were given a sort of snotty, sarcastic retort as well.
Now, perhaps this was our coffee jones (and related headache and shakes) twisting our perception of time and our sensibilities. But we didn't feel like we got very good customer service, almost to the point where the coffee didn't matter. When we did get the coffee, we didn't like it much. Seemed flat, watery. We went back two more times, but our perception has perhaps been overly affected by those few minutes, and we never really enjoyed anything there.
Knowing that perhaps our judgment had been clouded, we held off on a full-blown review, and only mention it here to illustrate our point: one cross, pre-caffeine irritant can put us off a place forever. In all fairness, we suspect Quetzal must be at least adequate, because it's frequently pretty crowded and there are a fair number of competitors not too far away. As we said, your Trimethyldioxypurist may not be trustworthy on this account. We welcome opinions of anyone who's been there.
Protective
We had an interesting e-conversation with a reader (I won't name her, but she should feel free to reveal herself in the comments section--we love our readers!). Basically, she recommended a place for us to review -- but then thought better of it.
She likes the place as it is. She didn't want it to get crowded, she said.
"My friend," we told her, "I think you overestimate the influence of the Trimethyldioxypurist column." We didn't anticipate hoards of SFist readers descending on her favorite hangout just on our say-so. Though we guess you never know.
Back to the point: we feel much the same way about our local favorites. We doubt we'd have ever mentioned Cup-A-Joe had we not been leaving the neighborhood, as it's crowded enough as it is. Perhaps we'd have never mentioned Gallery Cafe, way back in our first review, but for the fact that we wanted to start with our best foot forward.
So, to come clean with the readership: we're protective of the treasures we find--perhaps overly so. We do try to fight it; after all, we need something to write about. But we're not always 100% ready to give away our secrets. Our apologies.
Overly Grateful
The flip side of being overly annoyed at events prior to getting our caffeine: we'll admit to being overly generous at times when a cup of coffee saves us from the aforementioned afflictions of aching heads, jitters, shakes, eyes that won't open, etc.
Example: we woke up very early to move a few days ago. We'd had a headache for at least a week (so for once, it wasn't coffee related). We moved a bunch of crap from one part of town to the other, then got to the business of trying to organize it. But we hadn't had coffee yet. Riding in on the white horse was Martha & Bros., the one on 24th Street. If we'd written our review then, it'd seem like we were Martha & Bros.' grandmother, we'd've been so complimentary.
The truth? Well, we've been there before (the Calif. St. location about five times and this same 24th St. store an additional two times), and, just to verify, we went again this morning. And it's good, just the way we like it -- pretty bitter (which we like, but perhaps too much so; Mrs. Trimethyldioxypurist did not like the lattes there), but bold, dark, flavorful. Good--but nothing special.
Especially for this town, which has so much damned good coffee.
Conclusion
We respect your time, SFist readers, and your money. The last thing we want to do is misguide you. Thus the warning: sometimes your Trimethyldioxypurist (as with any review-type column) must be taken with a grain of salt. Or with whole milk and a lump of sugar (to keep the theme going).
And we'll reiterate our plea: if you have an opinion, voice it--whether it's to agree, disagree, or to point us to a different coffee shop entirely. If commenting in public isn't for you, you can reach us at trimeth-purist@sbcglobal.net.