Hard News: Food Show 08
245 Responses
First ←Older Page 1 … 6 7 8 9 10 Newer→ Last
-
Ok kiddies, stand back in awe of the mighty Barnzy as he enthralls you with his , almost prehistoric, recollections of coffee.
My first experience with the magic bean was back in 1956 whilst walking with my Mother down Tottenham Court Road, Lundun.. My tiny toddlers nostrils were assaulted by the most wondrous smell that has captivated Man since 9th century Ethiopia. We were walking past a Lyons Corner House and in those days they roasted the coffee in a wonderful red cast iron and brass contraption that sat in the window and the heady, pungent, almost chocolaty aroma wafted out onto the street. As it turned and tinkled I could feel the heat through the glass and I pressed my nose against that window in an attempt to get closer to that complex olfactory sensation. Mum couldn't help herself, she dragged me spellbound into a palace of light and petite fours, of fruits and flowers and that ever present coffee soaked air. Mum had a cappuccino, a drink, that some say, was named after the Capuchin order of monks who's garments were of a creamy white around the hood of a dark caramely colour habit reminiscent of a perfect coffee, I took a sip, I was hooked.
Over the many years that have passed since that fateful day I have tried, with varying levels of success and failure, to recapture that miraculous moment.
It took me years to discover that there are two main types of bean, Robusta and Arabica. The Robusta, Coffea canephora, although higher in it's caffene content is, in my humble opinion, the poor relation of the Arabica, Coffea arabica, which is the grandfather of coffees originating from Ethiopia and usually more expensive than it's poor relation.
To make a truly superior cup you should use only Arabica beans, otherwise your coffee will taste like poo (this can be improve by adding more poo from the bum of a feline coffee eating mammal) The roast is important also, too dark will give you a bitterness that will overwhelm the subtlety of the underlying flavours, too light will give you an almost bland mixture of indeterminable hints of undesirable chemical mustiness. The grind is almost as important as the roast, too course and the result will be watery and lacking in depth, too fine will cause all kinds of problems both mechanical and chemical. If the grind is too fine it can block your machine and create pressure problems. As the pressure rises then so does the temperature and with that the chemical process that will extract the brew, it will become bitter with a long lasting aftertaste that will make you regret the whole experience.
The Machine. This is the really hard bit. You can buy a machine that will do it all for you but in my experience they are big clumsy expensive and unreliable. A good stove-top model, like the Atomic mentioned by sofie, or the traditional two part Italian espresso pot so often found in sally Army shops (unfortunately not so often these days)
Then it's all practice and once you get that right, then there is no going back. :-) -
Espressoholic 2000. The hot chocolate is good, but is the ONLY thing it does well. Bad, non-local coffee, and music blaring at a volume that totally thwarts conversation
Espressoholic use the Sara Lee Corporation's Piazza D'Oro brand coffee. It's adequate but pales in comparison to 90% of the beans used by Wellington cafes.
And I've always maintained that if Espressoholic don't change their decor and hang on another 5 years, they can become a retro '90s theme cafe.
-
I like coffee, I like tea...
I like tea too and it is amazing how utterly incompetent most cafe staff are at making a pot of tea. If I order a pot of tea in a cafe, I always make sure to tell them to include two tea bags, three if it's a big pot. (Though it's better if they use tea leaves, of course).
This is because a lot of cafe staff are clueless at making a good pot of tea. They often chuck one tea bag in the pot, blindly unaware that one tea bag simply is not enough to produce a good, strong, tasteful brew.
With only one tea bag, the tea is weak and insipid and at at least $3 a pot, shouldn't be so. Coffee drinkers wouldn't accept an espresso with only half a shoot of coffee in it, so tea drinkers shouldn't accept weak tea.
Yes, I'm a tea nazi, sue me. ;) -
I went to Gov's for the icecream sundaes, anyway. And the hot chocolate.
Gov's sundaes were superb, as were their banana splits. A few months ago I had a truly outstanding piece of carrot cake there, so it's still pretty good.
-
Good old Just Desserts - I spent many a happy Sunday afternoon there!! Before setting up in Lorne St, they were in a building in lower Wakefield St that was demolished during the 1980's Chase Corporation-fueled building boom. They were the best of times, and the worst of times.....
If I remember rightly JD's was a good leftist co-operative owned and operated by those working there.....
-
I have yet to find a cafe or tea rooms that makes a good range of tea from leaves rather than bags. Kind of sad, but I think it will be getting better back home anyway, with the rise of the tea culture through those little speciality shops that have opened in the last few years.
Re Starbucks - for all that they do badly they were the best place to get a Chai Latte for a long time. It wasn't till about 2002-03 I was able to ask for one at a normal cafe and have a good chance of people not staring at me blankly.
So far as small town espresso - Oamaru had it's first proper such cafe in the mid 1990s (iirc), name of Emma's. We used to pop down there during school, feeling rather sophisticated (very hard to do in an all gray uniform). It recently closed down (several owners on), but Oamaru now has several good cafes (Steam, Short Black) and every other food place will do an espresso of variable quality.
In London there are the big chains - Starbucks, Caffe Nero and Costa. All are rather average but the latter two are better than nothing and it still is really hard to find good local small cafe espresso on the outskirts so one must do what one must do. If you are in London proper the best places I've found are Coffee Plant on Portobello Road, Monmouths in Covent Garden/Borough, Flat White/Milk Bar in Soho and Sacred in Carnaby St area. Espresso machines are everywhere though, so I have got hope that this is the forerunner of a wider explosion of quality
-
Paul Campbell I hear you about SB's silly names. There I am standing in the check-in queue at SeaTach Airport (appropriately). It is earlyish and I have not had my morning coffee. There is a SB kiosk 10m away and I can smell it... We are being held back while people arriving for a flight leaving in 5minutes can check in (this was the August prior to 9/11). When I finally check in an get over there with 15min to go till my flight I go up to the window and ask 'can I have a large espresso please?' clearly in a hurry. 'You wanna whaat?' the teenager drawls. 'A large espresso' 'A whaat?' So I have to decipher their menu and ask for a 'dopiaza' pay and go around to the other window to get my large espresso. It was horrible, but it contained caffeine. Never again.
-
Here in the UK you can buy those two part stove top coffee pots new in any size you like. I have a small one that makes two espressos though I often use the double for an Americano.
Hmmm, I smell and export opportunity. Whoops, forget I said that. Though what would people pay for one? with extra seals?
Note to self: stock up on seals before going home.
-
Hmmm, I smell and export opportunity. Whoops, forget I said that.
Available from Milly's and a few others in Ponsonby. Then there is New Market (with a few Tea Houses also) I am pretty sure you get the seals here but not as cheap as I noticed in the UK and then you could try the malls but I cant get behind that an'. We can do anything ! ..jus'..costs a bit more, but then ,from Italy to our place...
-
Those little stovetop espresso pots? They sell a range of them at Briscoes - that's where I got mine. In *Henderson*. Made in Italy, too. We truly are democratised!
(It occurs to me that my childhood, which was constantly interrupted by my father loudly grinding coffee beans he bought from one of the few European delis on the North Shore, was probably a bit unusual in this respect...)
-
I also spent my time listening to my father hand grinding coffee beans - he'd picked up the habit making it in a billy in the North African desert in WW2 - and still made it the same way - boiled some water on a pot on the stove, threw in a handfull of ground coffee and then some salt to settle the grounds.
He was probably the only person I knew at the time (in the 60s) who drunk non-instant coffee and I never picked up a liking for the black strong (and a bit salty) brew he made - until much much later (sans salt of course)
-
Actually I had another Starbucks moment this morning (I'm stuck in Seattle 'till Wednesday) - went to the local strip mall (I'm staying in stripmall hell) and ordered a "double non fat latte" remembering to add the "grande" to say how big it was. In most US cafes lattes come in a large glass (about the size of a bowl in NZ but easier to deal with without sloping it in your pants) - there's only one size - 'double' means more shots - I want to taste the coffee - turns out in SB "double" means exactly 2 shots which is what they put in a "grande" anyway.
See what I mean about SB changing the language of coffee
I've learned in NZ to say "an extra shot" rather than "double" because I think the SB-style shot counting seems to apply in NZ too.
As I said cafe culture is dialect - different all over there's no one true way to order it
Talking about the small stovetop espresso pots, I've had a camping one for years, makes one cup and can be run on a burner or dropped on the edge of a fire - you have to have your mug just so to catch the goodness when it goes off - perfect for that 6am wakeup in the desert (or to help with that burningman hangover) -
My boss when I was a PhD student had an Italian single shot model. He used to put it over a bunsen in the lab. There I would be hunched over the dissection microscope and the smell of fresh coffee would waft over. But I never got any of course... I would have to go downstairs to the common room and have a cup of Nescafe instant instead. Not the same.
-
A nice touch,if one is in Auckland, doesn't want the crowds attached to food shows or cafes,malls, etc,etc,etc is a visit to a couple of places (handy to lets say Mt Eden Prison).Next door to the Prison lies a few businesses and tucked in the first driveway is Sabato. Wonder through this delightful Deli, and along with the feast of European cuisine and greetings is the offer of free coffee. When first cup is finished, an offer for another follows. A thoroughly enjoyable experience,then up the street, left at the park,up to Mountain Rd and look for the entrance sign to the Tea rooms at the side of Mt Eden.Now if you want a sight to see, this is a garden worth the look.
-
<quote>My boss when I was a PhD student had an Italian single shot model.<quote>
Yes, but an actual single shot? When I met the mother of my children, she possessed an eight-cup model that she was convinced made two cups, on account of the fact that she was used to long coffees. I guess that explains why she seemed so frazzled. Since then I've seen this scenario repeated multiple times.
-
I checked out The Flat White website -- it plays Shapeshifter!
I was also quite pleased to see a column I wrote for Unlimited in 2006 reproduced in their press section. I'm still waiting for Fonterra to underwrite that global chain of flat-white-serving proper cafes though ...
-
Flat White is pretty awesome when looking for good coffee/familiar accents/slightly superior Barrista attitude. They have a semi competitor now, about 2 minutes walk away called "Milk Bar", which is very similar in layout, if slightly bigger, and staffed with Kiwis. I understand there may be some crossover but god knows what it is.
TL;DR - Soho/Carnaby St area now has at least 3x Kiwi coffee spots
-
The damn Flat White website inspired me to shlep around Soho with a less than willing German in tow.
It was worth when I got there.
-
if anything, this comments chain has shown that coffee isn't snobbery, it's a lifestyle.
-
Isn't it fascinating that one of the most good-natured and reasoned discussionon PA is about food? Turns out it might be the great leveller- after all, we all like to eat.
Regarding the Great Starbucks Debate, my two cents is that it's just awful coffe served in horribly antiseptic settings. All very Dawn of the Dead, and that's even before you get to the way they treat customers.
And it doesn't so far be cutting into the cafe market, because it's not really going for the same audience. Christ. Even McCafe is better if you want on the go, let's not think about what I'm drinking stuff.
Ah, Governors. I still miss the place, even if it was mainly for the company if not the coffee (there was a period where the whole staff knew me by name, as it went there every day), and the Percolator seemed to be on the upswing when I left Dunedin- the new management had cleaned it up and the service and range of stuff had improved. There was a year or so back when it seemed a bit lost.
I haven't had time to look around ChCh since I've got here, so what are the good cafes in town? I admit my usual lunch haunt is actually the Copenhagen Backery because the food is so good there. They know how to make good pastry-related delights.
-
I haven't had time to look around ChCh since I've got here, so what are the good cafes in town?
For coffee, C4 in High Street. I don't think I've ever actually consumed food there though.
-
I found The Vault upstairs at the Oxford end of Cashel mall quite good a few years back (out of date review) - surprised it had a cafe as well as designer stuff, and friendly staff.
-
Has anybody in London tried the cafe at Scooterworks in SE 1? http://www.scooterworks-uk.com/#
This is managed by a friend of mine Craig, and while I have never been there (I left the UK before it opened), I used to flat with the guy in Peckham and he made a mean coffee. He also imports coffee machines from Italy, the original type with handles, not buttons, as operated at DKD all those years back. -
I used to work at DKD circa 1990 baking cakes
You made that chocolate cherry gateau? Retroactively: thank you!Thank you! I knew I was helping to make a lot of people happy, and Darryl and Andrew were fine employers. Darryl taught me how to make the cakes.
-
I don't remember the coffee at Governors much, except that it was much better than the coffee in the Union*. What I remember about Governors was the Hot Apple and Walnut Cake. I had mine with yoghurt, absolute magic.
*I always maintained that Union coffee tasted like sump oil. This was confirmed for me one summer holiday working in the bike shop. It was a Saturday morning and I was busy building bikes so my coffee break was on the go. I turned to take a mouthful and my first thought was: this tastes like Union coffee. Then I saw the oil floating on top, one of my colleagues had added 3 in 1 to my Nescafe, et voila Otago Student Union Coffee...
Post your response…
This topic is closed.