Sunday Morning Coffee Conundrum
First off, we should thank the powers that be (as SFist Jon alluded to in his recent rant) that we have so many options for good, local, independent coffee places here in the city.
Sunday morning, however, we were a touch overwhelmed by what may have been too much of a good thing.
Our mission? We'd heard wonnnnnderful things about Tartine, the well-known and well-hyped little bakery over at 600 Guerrero. We've told you before how we can't stand lines, but we steeled ourself for that inevitability beforehand.
We could handle it. We believe, as we suspect many coffee lovers do, that a fine baked product can make an average coffee experience a lovely one, while a poor choice of food can destroy a lovely cup. Of course, a nice cup with great baked goods can be transcendent.
As we approached and saw the out-the-door line, we started thinking about crapping out, and maybe visiting one of the many other coffee options at this very intersection. After all, Platanos, with its selection of Cuban coffees, similar to Cafe lo Cubano, is right across the street. Only a few feet away was an interesting place we'd never noticed before, Faye's Video -- a video store with an espresso bar inside it! Talk about cool ideas.
So, for about 10 minutes we just wandered around within this triangle of caffeine-related establishments, unable to make a decision. And then it hit us -- why pick just one?
First we hit Tartine: We would recommend going with another party. Tartine allows you to buy coffee straight from the coffee bar, so one person can do this while the other waits in line -- lines are much more palatable with a little caffeine, no? Unfortunately, we were flying solo on this visit.
Tartine has a menu of hot items, like hot pressed sandwiches. Remember how we discussed appropriate food, above? While we were sort of jonesing for a croque monsieur (both carnivore and veggie options available), we weren't sure it would do our coffee much justice. Thus, the following went into our tasting line-up: hazelnut biscotti; currant oatmeal cookies; double-chocolate cookies (made with Scharffen Berger, which a few months ago would have meant major points with us, but, as we've complained about on the 'Fist before, now is sort of "meh" to us); and, finally, a slice of pumpkin tea-cake.
It took about 25 minutes until we had baked goods in hand, and maybe five more before our cappuccino was ready. Tartine uses Mr. Espresso's organic offerings for its espresso; it's a local company whose coffee is pretty good to our experience, but not exceptional. Could the barista's skilled hand make it stand out?
Well, no. Okay -- the cappuccino she made was fine, good even -- a touch milky versus our cappuccino gold standard, but we wouldn't complain about it. We followed it up with a drip coffee that was only fair. Of course, the coffee just served a backdrop for our little tasting menu. The hazelnut biscotti was really nice and went well with the java. The currant oatmeal cookies? On their own, excellent -- the best of what we tried, really -- but the coffee-compatibility factor was rather low. The x2 chocolate cookies needed a stronger brewed cup of coffee; it just overwhelmed our cappuccino. Finally, the pumpkin tea-cake reminded us of our philosophy that the creator put squash on Earth just for the purpose of baking bread and cake with it -- good stuff. Went just fine with the coffee as well.
So Tartine was a swell experience, and we'd recommend it to anyone, particularly if good food is your primary objective. Next, we wandered over to Faye's -- it looks like a really great, alternative little video store with a mostly alternative selection. And the espresso bar inside was so cool! But . . . and here we must admit a pet peeve of ours, as we told SFist Rita the other day when we got coffee at Citizen Cupcake: we actively avoid Illy Coffee, which is what Faye's (and Citizen Cupcake and many other perfectly fine establishments in the Bay Area) serves.
Why? Well, come on. If our goal is to keep things local, why do we want coffee that goes to Italy to be roasted, and subsequently comes to America? The closer you drink your coffee to the roasting date (after a 4-5 day waiting period for the chemical process to finish, of course), the better. Even though Illy claims to have a revolutionary style of packaging that maintians freshness, we'd much rather buy from a Bay Area roaster -- or at least one in this country -- when we're here. We'll drink plenty of Illy when we visit Italy some day, we're sure. When we see a giant drum of coffee that came from Italy hooked up to the burr grinder, well -- we'd rather go elsewhere. Sorry. On to Platanos.
Platanos offers some interesting coffee choices -- we went for the Cafe de Olla, which promised ingredients of espresso, milk, light brown sugar (the carbs! we know, we know) and, interestingly, anise seed. We love Sambuca and thought, heck, why not, could be evocative of that fine liqueur. The folks working at the time didn't sound entirely sure, but one claimed that they get their beans from Equator (which we took to mean the fine roasting company in San Rafael). The concoction was indeed sweet -- but not so much that it beat us over the head with it. And the anise flavor was really interesting; it was almost fruity and a little tart, not quite the "Sambuca" effect we expected. Even so, it was quite good; very different from our usual, traditional coffee tastes.
Did we mention we followed this up with a trip to Bi-Rite for some whole beans and good chocolate? Alas, we've rambled on much too long already; that'll have to wait for another day.
What a city -- so much good coffee, you can get lost even at a single intersection.