All tagged cafe

Café Passmar

En route to the Frida Kahlo's house in Coyoacán, I made a pit stop for lunch at Mercado Lázaro Cardenas, the covered market in Colonia Del Valle. The market, abundant in colorful piñatas, fruits, and antojitos, also had another surprise: excellent coffee. I was floored to see a La Marzocco occupying the small space squeezed between two fruit-vendors. It's hard to imagine a more perfect afternoon snack than fresh tostadas followed by an espresso (or three). Café Passmar has some of the best coffee I've tasted in Mexico. Passmar's house blend is entirely Mexican in origin, a secret mixture of beans from Guerrero and Chiapas. The coffee is roasted just next door to the storefront at Passmar's micro roastery. This was the first time I'd tried coffee in the same country from where the beans originated. All the best espresso I'd had previously contained beans that were cultivated, packaged, and air-shipped halfway the world before being roasted. After seeing what the dryness and low pressure environment of air transport does to food I've packed myself, it would be hard to imagine that extended air transportation doesn't have an effect on coffee beans.

The coffee I tasted at Passmar was some of the nuttiest most chocolatey espresso I have ever tasted. My girlfriend -- who despises coffee -- took one sip and nearly finished my first cappuccino.

Bear Pond Espresso

The last time I was in Japan I didn't care much for coffee. It wasn't until a revelatory experience at Joe's in the summer of 2009 that I started to like it. Rather, become a bit obsessed. And so when I visited Tokyo this December I was determined to explore the city's cafe offerings. I was particularly interested in how Japanese precision and general distaste for sourness would translate to espresso. I started with a list of twenty-five cafes that my friend and barista Yukimim put together for me. I went to all of them (in four days!). Of all the cafes I visited, one place really stood out as extraordinary: Bear Pond Espresso. Bear Pond is the home of barista-owner Katsu Tanaka, an 18-year New York resident who recently moved back to Tokyo and opened shop. Tanaka -- who doesn't allow another's hands to touch the espresso machine in fear of lack of consistency -- closes the doors to Bear Pond at 2pm. "After 2pm," he explains, "too many people come and I cannot make consistent coffee." Bear Pond's shots, really a pseudonym for Tanako's since he is the only barista, are remarkably consistent.