Results tagged “bluebottle”

Now that donuts have made a return to Bay Area coffee houses--minus its exhausting Homer Simpsonesque, white-trash irony--you can find the preferable pastries at places like Ritual Coffee Roasters (vegan! and actually good!), Seattle's Best at Border's Books & Music (double-glazed), and even Starbucks (plasticky). With the return of the donut comes the return of the brewed coffee. At least, according to today's New York Times, which profiles the Blue Bottle Cafe, scheduled to open today this week, and their bizarre Jules Verne-ish coffee contraption. The first-prize-at-the-science-fair-like machine is poised to make coffee's tarnished reputation shine again.

Some time ago, we met Steve Ford, who, among other things pulls a great shot of espresso. We met him during his tenure with the stalkerriffic Blue Bottle Coffee Company; since our encounter, he's moved onto another coffee-related venture as a roaster at Ecco Caffe in Santa Rosa. Steve recently had a not-so-pleasant experience--he fell out the third-story window of the Burlington Hotel in Port Costa, Calif.

As longtime fans of New York real-estate blog Curbed, we still cringe when we recall the night we drunkenly nagged creator Lockhart Steele "When will we get a San Francisco Curbed? Why don't you love us? Waaaaaah!" We blacked out shortly thereafter, but we're pretty sure Steele just looked at us disgustedly and walked away.

Food & Wine has a pretty interesting take on what's good in coffee these days -- The Obsessive's Guide to Coffee.". The magazine has some purdy pictures, but you can get it all, plus more, here on the internets. We really enjoyed it, but the title of the article may be a bit off. Obsessive? Ummm, not really. No, we don't think so. Enthusiast, perhaps, would have been a better choice. An obsessive would already be doing things like . . .

In the nearly year and a half we've been doing coffee-related writing here on SFist, we've taken a number of pictures that we've heretofore been unable to shoehorn into one of our "Trimethyldioxypurist" episodes. So, hey, it's time for a few leftovers.

Last week, we posted our 'Fistie awards for best coffee/cafe in town. A few of the people leaving comments mentioned Cafe Organica at 562 Central Ave. (at Grove) as a contender for the crown. We're pleased to say that had we visited Cafe Organica, which opened last May, just a couple weeks earlier, stalwarts Ritual Roasters and Blue Bottle would have had to share some of the limelight. This place is great.

Boy--we sure love completely subjective awards, and we're super thankful for a chance to give out a few of our own.

So how do we balance our fawning coverage of Matt Gonzalez' birthday? Why, unintentionally hilarious pictures of Gavin, of course! Matt over at 1115.org dropped by Blue Bottle Coffee, followed the sound of drums, and found the Gavster enthusiastically participating in a ground breaking ceremony on Octavia. Add a new camera and some black-and-white film into the mix, and you have the recipe for Flickr candy.

Whether you are a Ralph Barbieri fan that enjoys Amici's, a Berkeley-ite that swears by Zachary's, a fan of Chesh's recent discovery Pizza Fiesta, or you, like friend/idol of SFist Pim, enjoy the pies at Pizzetta 211 (after all, they carry Blue Bottle Coffee, folks), we think many people in this town agree: good pizza is not very common in the Bay Area. That's pretty much the whole list right there.

There are times when we of modest writing ability are in bliss, for we find a subject that seems to write itself.