Hey, have you seen all those annoying "Let's meet at Starbucks" adverts? Quite irritating. Well, SBUX is indeed bringing folks together -- in a way they may not be too happy about. many businesses and residents in the Inner Richmond are protesting via petition an invasion of one of Starbuck's nigh ubiquitous stores....

True story from a crowded J-Church this morning. We were sitting quietly, a little zoned out, holding the 20 oz. cup of coffee that we'd obtained at our neighborhood cafe with both of our hands, which had become rather cold from time outside. Yes, we had a lid on it. The J-Church, particularly when it's on the streets heading from Dolores Park up to Market St., is a little herky-jerky. One well-known hazard faced by regular MUNI riders (whether bus or street car): you take a risk if you stand or try to move in advance of the vehicle actually coming to a complete stop. Chances are good you might take a dive if you try it. Hasn't this happened to most of us at one time or another?...

Ritual Coffee Roasters' two locations are only about three miles apart. Not so bad on a bike, right? Well, what if you're biking with 130 pounds of coffee? Yeah, a little tougher. This Saturday, popular cafe Ritual Roasters, in conjunction with Bikes to Rwanda, is having a wacky, multi-tiered charity event that involves bike-race betting, film-watching, a raffle, and the consumption of both of our favorite beverages: booze and coffee....

What's with all the "McDonald's coffee is better than Starbucks," survey stuff going around? Evidently, a taste test or two places the coffee from the Golden Arches in a higher position than the ubiquitous chain-coffee house. This started about a month back with this Consumer Reports study, and has been percolating further on recent "stunning revelations" that McD's is going to serve actual espresso as well. One of the most bothersome aspects of this is major news concerns are talking and talking about it. STOP! PLEASE! ...

We've seen some hideous examples of what can happen when a product attempts to combine several things into one. We've also seen some pretty good examples. Well, now there's a pretty stellar one: Mateveza Yerba Maté Ale, a pale ale enhanced by maté, a South American tea that is known for its health and energy benefits. ...

There are many fine examples of patisseries and boulangeries that make wonderful coffee. Cocola, one such establishment in the Westfield, that new wondrous monstrosity of a shopping complex, is not one of them. While we're confident that most savvy SFist readers would have realized this on some fundamental level, we hoped that our instincts would prove wrong. After all, most everyone gets dragged on occasion to the mall or a similar place they'd rather not be; the promise of a decent cup of joe in the Westfield would have done much to mitigate our own reluctance....

Hey, folks, your Trimethyldioxypurist is back with a quick follow-up to the review of Meth Coffee we posted yesterday. We're tempted to just link to this press release without comment. ...

We were a intrigued when we heard about San Francisco-based roaster "Meth Coffee," who had enough media coverage on launch day that we actually heard somebody on news radio talking about it. The brand's provocative name is underscored by its marketing scheme: an anonymous roaster ("The Roaster") who transmits his missives from some underground bunker or safehouse, describing the strange and wonderful effects from his lastest concoctions. Yeah, it's a gimmick. It struck us at first as silly, but since it's all about the coffee, we tried it anyway. We hoped that our actual tasting of the coffee would mitigate our initial negative sentiments about the branding. A company rep was kind enough to send us a 10 oz. sample, which usually retails for $12. ...

Please excuse us. We need to take issue with an article, "French roast brews, sip for sip" in today's Los Angeles Times....

So, there's a new Caffe Trieste location, right smack dab on Market Street (1667 Market, at Gough). This represents the company's fourth location, but its second here in the city . . . the other one being the original North Beach location. Which we dig quite a bit. So how does the new location compare to the old? Let's break it down....

We recently discovered Cafe Ponte, which knocked us the heck out . . . and we keep going back. Again and again. Cafe Ponte has a lot of charming aspects--good coffee, of course, being one of them....

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. ...

In part one of our spotlight on Ritual Roasters, we told you the backstory behind one the the Mission's most popular new cafes. We did, however, save one important component of that story for this follow-up: the origin of the name. Sure, the name "Ritual Roasters," resonates, has nice alliteration, and may seem like a no-brainer. For Eileen Hassi and Jeremy Tooker, though, the process was agonizing....

"Our friends pitied us when they saw this place," says Eileen Hassi, co-proprietor of red-hot Mission District cafe Ritual Roasters. "They told us we were doing everything wrong." Jeremy Tooker, her co-proprietor, agreed. "We had too much space, they said," he says. "We'd never fill the tables. The streets around here were dead before 10 a.m." What may have seemed a series of missteps and misadventures to Hassi and Tooker's peers turned out to be serendipity -- the stuff that goes into the best of origin stories. Stuffed into the back office, under the eyes of a giant millipede for whom the gang was pet sitting, the Eileen and Jeremy talked to SFist about how and why they got their start, what it's like to run a small business in one of San Francisco's hippest 'hoods, some of the keys to their recent success, and what's next to come. ...

So, get this -- Cafe Gratitude has coffee. It's not brewed, but instead, per the cafe's menu, "infused for 48 hours in cold water." Organic beans, no less, from a company known as Thanksgiving Co. according to the server I spoke with. We knew we had to try it. We anticipated something awful (though not as awful as our last adventure in ), and were looking forward to writing some wonderful headline like "Grateful Dread." Well, truth be told, while it ain't like the coffee like we're used to, it wasn't so bad. ...

So, while for the most part we're very into doing coffee the "right way" (grind just before brewing, etc etc), there's a part of us that's super susceptible to gimmickry. We always want to try that new breakfast cereal ("But, sweetie, the marshmallows are shaped like PANTS"), or that new pizza where they bake your head right into the cheese-filled crust. So we're at the less-than-supermarket Thursday, and we see this 4-pack of Wolfgang Puck's "Rich Espresso Latte" beverage, which comes in a SELF-HEATING CUP. Whoa. Awesome....

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. ...

A few months ago, we stumbled across a really interesting coffee-related Web site -- www.coffeeratings.com, which (obviously) rates Bay Area cafes primarily according to the espresso they serve. The site's companion blog, The Shot, reveals more about the origins of the site, the methodology used to determine these ratings, and gives us insight to the man behind the reviews: Greg Sherwin. ...

Funny how it seems just a little while ago that I was doing this very thing for ‘04. Huh. Well, I’m not so sure that I was especially insightful in my assessment of last year, so for the '05 version, I'll stick to things I know--namely me. I should also mention for the record that I am grateful for these occasional opportunities to write in the first person, rather than the "collective we" as is usually mandated here at the 'Fist....

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. People who've been reading our "Trimethyldioxypurist" missives will not be especially surprised by the winners. For those who are strangers to our periodic ramblings about coffee and cafes around the City by the Bay, here are our favorites among the many, many cool, delicious, and often unique coffee choices at which we overcaffeinated......

A dialogue between SFists Rita and Jeremy on the eternally-debated question of the best burrito in San Francisco Rita: Let the burrito debates begin! Lincoln/Douglas rules! (I have absolutely no idea what that actually means, but doesn't that sound all high-school debate-team-y?) RESOLVED: that Papalote has the best frickin burrito in town. Mmmmm, I love me the Papalote fish burrito. The buttery fish, the just-the-right-amount-of-flour tortilla, the tangy organic tomato/onion/cilantro, and if you eat......

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 Guerrerro. 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. ...

Okay, so Burger King has introduced this new coffee, B.K. Joe, available in regular, decaf, and (wait for it . . .) TURBO ("40 percent more caffeine!"). A lot of places hope to lure in customers with good coffee as a sweetener to buy other products. McDonald's, for instance, is doing something similar, but using New England as the test market, so we can't really check that out yet (using fair trade, organic coffee and hyping the quality, not the power; seems like a better idea to us). Specialty's, though, is now carrying Intelligentsia coffee, a pretty well-known brand out of Chicago that's apparently well liked amongst coffee snobs. We, in fact, were excited to hear this; Specialty's old coffee . . . well, let's just say your Trmiethyldioxypurist's cheapness is well known, yet he couldn't stomach Specialty's 50-cent-if-you-bring-your-own-cup deal back when he used to work near the Montgomery Station location. ...

Welcome, children, to a very special Halloween episode of the Trimethyldioxypurist. We have an update, an experiment, and a couple reviews of some coffee beans....

SFist would like to extend a warm welcome to all of you who found us via SFist Chuck's SFist Tech Roundup. Lotsa other stuff besides our contemplation of Apple's bigger plan over here at SFist last week... Like our contemplation of The Orphanage's bigger plan, which we promise to never contemplate again if they give SFist Matty-Matt (who appeared during KRON's coverage of the story a day later, as he raised his hand at......

The Trimethyldioxypurist sort of phones it in and compares the death of a loved one to coffee an an awkward and ineffective way. Enjoy!...

There are few things as beloved as chocolate--it can change moods, please crowds, make an otherwise forgettable event suddenly memorable. It's magical. And it can concern us sometimes, as with recent local chocolatiers selling operations to the big boys. Among the folks still doing it locally--and well--is Chuck Siegel of Charles Chocolates. An interview follows:...

We found a really nice coffee -- from a local roaster no less -- and when we made it at home on our stovetop doohicky (still our favorite mode of home brewing), it was as good or better than anything we've had in a cafe. From our little kitchen in the dungeon, no less! Taylor Maid Farms has great coffee -- and President Mark Inman drops by with the skinny on this great enterprise....