coffee is more than an ingredient
Why is coffee taken for granted by most foodies, high end restaurants, and food writers?
For most foodies, coffee is just an ingredient (good or bad) with preparations (favored or frowned upon), and admired as much or more for the “romance” or nostalgia it evokes in its presentation. There is a general ignorance of the flavor complexity of coffee (threefold more complex than wine), the importance of freshness, and the craft of roasting and preparation. Wine, beer, cheese, - hell, even sparkling water - enjoy more nuanced appreciation by most food critics and restauranteurs.
Thomas Keller’s French Laundry, considered one of the top restaurants in the U.S., serves stale, pre-ground “pod” coffee.
Famed NYTimes food critic and Gourmet Magazine Editor-in-Chief Ruth Reichl’s coffee knowledge extends little further than a brand loyalty towards dark-roasting giant Peet’s.
A few articles have appeared in major news outlets about the emergence of a coffee geek culture - the coffeegeek.com/alt.coffee crowd, home coffee roasting with popcorn poppers, people rigging up elaborate home espresso gadgetry… very little of this noise has really done much justice to the coffee itself. Serious food writers, almost without exception, have turned a blind eye towards deeper understanding and appreciation of coffee.
So it falls on the emerging culture of small roasters and quality focused cafes to undertake the herculean task of reeducating a public led astray by decades of coffee misinformation. I’ll write more about that in an upcoming post, but I do want to briefly make the case for why this is important: the establishment of a strong high-end retail market for top quality origin coffees is the best way to ensure a sustainable future for struggling coffee farmers in the developing world. Roasters will willingly pay triple market price for an exceptional coffee if the retail market can become sophisticated enough to appreciate and absorb those coffees. Simply slapping a FairTrade(tm) sticker on a bag of coffee isn’t going to move us forward.
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July 6th, 2005 at 12:59 am
Nobody taught them. While blame must certainly lie upon institutes like the CIA, such places are not the origin. Culture is knowledge of a community, taught through inference as much as lecture. Taboos and assumptions are just popular terms for group-think, the near orwellian term for indoctrination due to small groups in cultural isolation.
Many who love quality food were raised to appreciate it. They often sought others who were similar. They share food lore, review top restaurants, trade recipes and tricks. But while the foodies and the winos interbreed, we stand outside.
These people don’t consider us to be in their group. We don’t consider them to be in ours. It’s a very “us-them” situation.
Who claims to appreciate their culture? Who sees the need for their art in ours? Who will claim to be no hypocrite? Not I.
July 6th, 2005 at 7:26 pm
I recently had dinner at a pretty nice Italian place here in Nashville. My girlfriend was in the mood for an after-dinner espresso. I suggested we drive the 0.5 miles to the shop where I work so that I could pull her a nice shot from beans roasted 3 days ago. But she wanted it at the table, which seemed reasonable. Big mistake.
When it came to the table, the china was cold to the touch, and the drink was not much warmer. She made a face as she sipped it and claimed that it tasted like CrackerJacks (the caramel popcorn and peanut treat). After sampling it, i’ve never heard a more accurate description of any coffee. It was nasty, but tasted like burnt CrackerJacks.
The restaurant probably thought they were doing a good thing by having an espresso machine and by featuring the Illy logo on the menu, but it was terrible.
I too have been wondering why restaurants that are so picky about other ingredients are content to serve pre-ground foil-bagged staleness. Maybe the lure of free brewers in exchange for the institutional coffee service is too great. I know that our shop doesn’t have the capital to buy grinders and brewers for other restaurants, and we don’t want our name next to coffee that the food runner made without training, but we’d love the business of providing fresh, high-quality, locally roasted beans to any of the many fancy-assed restaurants in this city.
I’ll be looking forward to reading about your efforts.
July 7th, 2005 at 1:43 pm
It never fails to astound me that the last thing we taste before leaving a restaurant is often allowed to be easily the worst.
I’ve tried talking to a variety of restaurants but they just seem uninterested.
July 7th, 2005 at 3:33 pm
Do you know what?
I have had this thought so many times but have always brushed it off because I hated to admit that some of my dining experiences have been ruined by bad coffee.
I have eaten at some very very good kitchens and on the whole the coffee has been terrible.
I simply cannot understand why a restaurant can employ a Maitre d’, a sommelier and a fromagier but not a decent barista. How can you pay upwards of $500 for a meal for two and then be slapped in the face with a sad, burnt and crema-less coffee?
July 7th, 2005 at 5:23 pm
Tony, I feel your pain. I have invited the members of the Culinary Historians of Southern California (a pretty influential group of food writers) to come to the SCAA Consumer Homecoming July 23 in Long Beach, CA. Would you like to educate them further with some Victrola samples? Please contact me!
Ted Lingle will be explaining the Flavor Wheel, and Tim Castle will conduct a Le Nez du Cafe session, among other things. So, sensory training is definitely on the agenda.
July 10th, 2005 at 10:54 am
Marhall,
Sounds neat! I’ll email you and see what we can do.
August 3rd, 2005 at 3:26 am
hi, i start a new project called cafexperiment.com, a collection about coffee picts
here is the site www.cafexperiment.com… if you have your owns, i’d like to get some picts from you! :)
regards
bastet
August 8th, 2005 at 7:42 am
CoffeeGeek and alt.coffee have done a great deal but it remains to be seen whether they can take it to the next level. At the moment both sites are heaving under the weight of discussion about the machinery side of things (which is pretty interesting in itself).
The next level is, I think, more focus on the bean itself. I think George Howell’s comments on CoffeeGeek podcast re terrior as a concept were quite inspiring in this regard.
Alec
February 23rd, 2006 at 10:51 am
Does this blog provide a subscription feed?