Archive for June, 2009
The ABC of Tea at the T-Spot
Our guest blogger Ndunge, lives in Nairobi and absolutely loves everything about tea. Her kitchen cupboard can testify that she owns stacks and stacks of different types of tea. In her words, "I went to kericho once and toured several tea farms...Funny thing was I had my worst cup of tea in Kericho." I discovered this little gem quite by accident, next door is a garage and I took my car in for some service. Unfortunately the garage was quite busy. I joined the queue but was soon very bored of sitting in the car surrounded by greasy men and petrol fumes. I decided to look around for a restaurant where I could sit down and read my book while perhaps sipping a decent cup of tea. When I asked one of the garage attendants if there was one such place he looked at me like I was the silliest woman he had ever seen. He very brusquely pointed out that the next building was actually called Chai House and the restaurant called T-Spot. How could I have missed that? Kenya Tea Development Agency has its headquarters [...]
Wallingford's Gypsy Cafe
Gypsy Java, originally uploaded by andai. I visited Gypsy Cafe in Wallingford. Unfortunately my experience there was not quite what I had expected or hoped for. I'll tell you why in a moment... but first, a little background... I have driven by Gypsy Cafe on numerous occasions over the last six or eight year now. Of course at that time the place was called Gypsy Trader. My understanding is that the place was home to some kind of consignment store... that also included a coffee shop too. Now the main reason why I had not yet until rather recently, bothered to go there is simple. The place just did not look interesting or even inviting from the outside. This has not changed by the way. Anyway it was just recently that I read about the place in the Seattle Times and that the place being sold to the current new owners, Debbie Galassi and Ben Steele, Debbie's boyfriend. On reading this blog post, I decided, against my better judgment, to patronize the place. It was one of those overcast Seattle afternoons [...]
Coffee and Beignets at Cafe Du Monde
Our guest blogger Kathleen VanDerAa writes for the Seattle PI and Altrooist. She lives in Seattle where she takes her coffee with 2 sugars and 2 creams. Back in March I got a chance to take a business trip to New Orleans. Months before I had started making lists, where I wanted to go, what I wanted to see, but mostly the lists contained things I wanted to eat. The original Cafe Du Monde in the French Quarter was very high at the top of a mighty long list. The first night in New Orleans I headed straight there. I had waited months to try a beignet and I wasn't about to wait any longer. I had already endured months of anticipation - to build it up in my head to more than it could ever hope to be - months to ruin it with overly high expectations. Looking back it was like I was trying to ruin it before I even had the chance to experience it. How could it possibly live up to all that? Except it lived up to everything I could possibly anticipate and more. The fact that they had coffee was just an added side [...]
Get Your Fix At "The Fix" Espresso
I have always been a bit apprehensive about espresso carts and especially those espresso carts that tend to locate themselves in weird places like at gas stations or at Seven eleven type delis. In general, I rarely get my espresso drinks from espresso carts, not because an espresso cart equates to bad coffee, but because I have seen my fair share of the really bad ones. And yet the irony here is that I was first introduced to and hooked on espresso drinks by a friend of mine who used to work from an espresso cart. Then there are a number of great coffeehouses that started off as espresso carts and of course if you keep up with the World Barista Championships, you'll remember that Gwilym, the WBC 2009 champion from London England runs and serves espresso drinks out of two coffee carts. The moral of the story here is that even though there are quite a number of really bad espresso carts, there are also plenty of really great espresso carts out there and each one of them needs to be given a chance and needs to [...]
e.t.g in Fremont is Espresso to Go
Whenever I'm in the Fremont neighborhood, I tend to head over to Fremont Coffee Company (FCC) for my latte. I do this for couple of reasons, first, they have great Wi-Fi and second but even more important, they serve Lighthouse Coffee. It is for these reasons that I often driven by e.t.g. Coffee and never really bothered to drop in and try them out, only saying to myself, "one day I will have to get a latte there". Well, after all these years I finally decided I needed to make that one day today... and so I actually dropped in for a latte and to see what they are all about. The first thing that struck me about the place was that it is really, really tiny inside. And when I say the place is tiny, I mean its really, really tiny… for a coffee shop. There is one table inside so a couple of people can get really cozy inside, but for the most part, unless you want to sit on the outside chairs, you are likely to be getting your joe to go. Now one thing I didn’t really check was whether they had seating in [...]
Attending the Yellow Church Café
The Yellow Church Café in Ellensburg is a kind of cool looking house (or church) that's been converted to a cafe. I love that the outside is a bright and sunny yellow color that really makes it stand out. Once inside, you can clearly see from the architecture that this used to be a church. I think its interesting that Gordy and Cat Wollen, who own and run the cafe, are actually both P.K.'s or preacher's kids. Seems to really fit their background I must say. The place itself is very family friendly and it seems to be pretty popular with the students from Central Washington University (I believe). The food was good, but I wouldn't really go raving about their lattes. But then again this is Eastern Washington and whenever I go to cafes in Eastern Washington, I tend more often than not to be at the best unimpressed, at the worst, disappointed. I think with this place it was somewhere in between... And I don't even remember where their coffee was from... My visit to this place was a one off visit and I doubt [...]