Boston: Flour, Aroma, Pavement, 1369, many others

Saturday was our wander-about-town-day, so of course I managed to steer us past a few coffee joints.  One huge winner, a couple of interesting places, and a bunch that I walked out of without ordering.

Started the day off some of the Honduras coffee I'd purchased from barismo.  Skerton grinder & the Clever make good travelling companions, although in the future I think I'll just pack a v60: I like the Clever, but I'm not always as happy with it as other methods.  What I really wanted to bring was my vac-pot, but between the fragility and the troubles with transporting/fuelling the burner I just didn't want to mess with it.

After wandering about Cambridge for a bit, we took the T over to Boston proper, where I was hoping to track down S I P Cafe.  Took forever to find it, and then it turns out they're closed on Saturdays (contra their website)!  Bummer.  They have a literally ridiculous location, right in this park downtown, I'd love to know how they got it (and what they pay for it).

There was a local food festival going on by the Children's museum, so we wandered through that for a while and got some goodies.

Chatted real briefly with the woman at the slow food tent, mostly just to give a little moral support.  It seems to me like, at least in theory, specialty coffee folks should be talking with the slow food folks.

I saw some people with an espresso machine cranking in the middle of the festival, which excited me: a few people at Spot keep talking about going mobile with a cart for festivals, farmers markets etc.  However, after watching the operator for a little bit, unfortunately, I didn't want to order anything.  Short shots, appeared to be resteaming milk to temp over and over again.  Alas.


Flour Bakery & Cafe was just around the corner, so we went there for a quick bite.  It was crazy busy and were fiending for food, so I didn't take any pictures.  My espresso was decent, the staff was very friendly despite the madness, and the food was excellent.  The French Toast might have been the best I've ever had--my brain's having a hard time coming up with a contender.

L'Aroma Café

85 Newbury St, Boston

L'Aroma hadn't been super-prioritized on my list, but we were walking about that area anyway so we stopped in.  I noticed latte art going out on pretty much all drinks, which I took for a good sign.  However, even more exciting:

Sarah's a Buffalo native and a Spotter in the summer and holidays.  I knew she'd got a job as a barista somewhere in Boston, I'd even talked to her boss when they were checking references, but I actually had never heard which café it was.  Turns out, it's L'Aroma!  It was really great to catch up with her for a minute a two--neat to hear what she thinks about the job and the coffee scene now that she's been a barista for a while.

Aroma was also packed, looks like a good café--again, my espresso was decent, Jessica & Anthony reported good things on their cappuccinos.  It seems like a more European-style café, though it's hard to point to just one thing to explain that.  That can be a bad thing--people using "Europe=Fancy" logic to cover up mediocre product and service, but here you can tell that somebody has a clear idea of what they want out of the café, and it's working.  Lauren got an iced London Fog, and it was pretty bad-ass: they used a cold-foam technique for the milk (didn't see what they did exactly), and layered that over the superbly-iced tea (again, didn't see how they did that), with a little layer of vanilla syrup at the bottom.  Great presentation, and the cold foam was really nice.

Through our journeys around town, we popped in to a ton of little cafés, and after a quick inspection I bailed on most of them.  Anthony seemed very curious about this process, so I tried to quantify it for him.  Basically, I have a loose point system, with a few things that just seal the deal in a bad way.  I can drink bad coffee if I need the caffeine, without complaining; what I won't do is pay $2 and up over and over again for really bad coffee when I'm hunting for something extraordinary.  I particularly won't pay for multiple bad espresso drinks if I can help it, and, like most baristas, I've learned a few "tells" that can warn me away from a shop's product.  I'll have to do a write-up on that.

However, all the wandering paid off at the next serious shop.

Pavement Coffeehouse

1096 Boylston Street, Boston

Obviously, they're going to pull in an awesome crowd on the name alone (and it leaves them open to doing something with "Jicks Café" if they open another one or break up or something).  But, name aside, this was my favorite stop on the whole Boston tripe, for a number of reasons.

 

Cool artwork all through the shop, by a lady named Alexa Guariglia.  It's rare that I comment positively on art in a café, so, there you go.  I really dug all of it.

Really love the set-up and décor in here.  A lot.  Lots of light, clean, nice mix of seating, cozy without being shabby, hip without seeming pretentious.  Nailed it.

But, of course, you could have the prettiest café in the world and I wouldn't really care.  It's coffee I'm after, and Pavement delivered.

First off, they're using 3 roasters, and proud of it.  Square One, Atomic, and Counter Culture.  Menu pic's blurry, but you can see what they're doing:

This "slow bar" menu is separate from the batch-brewed options and their (wonderfully limited) light fare.  Awesome.  The service wasn't slow by any standard, but just calling it the slow bar is a a great way to gently alert people that, yes, quality coffee takes a little longer than the other kind.

They have a house espresso (they were using Counter Culture's Toscano), and also have a rotating "featured" or "guest espresso"--this day it was Opus 11 by Square One.  I actually opted for the Toscano for my macciato, because I'm a fan. Pavement baristas' espresso-craft is solid, I had a great shot, and art in a macciato tells me that they care.

But what really sold me, it's practically a bribe actually: awesome Ethiopian coffee, brewed to order, in this case in a Hario v60.  Boom, blueberries to the face.  Their sizes for v60 coffee are 8oz, or a "large" 12oz,  hallelujah--no soul-crushingly giant cups in sight.  This is the cup I've been waiting for all week.  (To be fair, the Guatemalan vacpot I had at barismo was also world-class; I'm just a sucker for a good Ethiopian brew).

On top of all this, the baristas were also friendly, professional, knew their coffee and weren't afraid to talk about it a little.  Pavement, good job, I'll be steering people your way.

We took a long walk home on Massachusetts ave, and I hopped in to a couple coffee houses real quick on the way:

Toscanini's Ice Cream

899 Main Street, Cambridge

I heard these folks have drastically upped their espresso game, and that their coffee is even better.  Unfortunately, it was packed to the gills when we stopped by, so I didn't order anything--still hoofing it home.  Their barista totally looked like he know what he was doing, though, rocking out on a GB/5.  Definitely gotta make it here next time.

Clear Conscience Cafe

581 Mass. Ave, Cambridge

Clear Conscience Café or "C3" is playing up the Fair Trade/Organic angle real hard to the co-op shopping kind of crowd, know what I mean?  Yes, I'm guilty too.  I wish they were Direct Trade, and I get a little skeeved out by Fair Trade being touted as such an awesome ethical thing (lack of transparency etc.), but other things being equal it's a good thing, and I'm glad someone is selling coffee so well on that point.  My espresso was okay, nothing outstanding--but I find that drinkable espresso is already in like the top 10% of all espressos being served out there, so I'm happy with that.  Getting to maybe the top 5%, where I actively like it, is actually just about as rare as a plain old, decent, not-horrible shot.

The baristas at C3 weren't too clear on where there coffee is actually from (transparency issues in microcosm?) but I don't think they roast it themselves, just re-brand it or something, apparently sell it around town as well.  I ran into it the next morning at the place we had brunch.  Where, total side note, Anthony got one of the more amazing breakfast pizzas I've ever seen:

1369 Coffee House

757 Mass. Ave, Cambridge

I was impressed with this location when I visited Boston last year: got some great latte art, and struck up a good conversation with the baristas.  My visit to the main location this time around was decidedly ho-hum; the Cambridge location was better.  Don't know if that's some kind of micro-culture of training, or just luck, but my cap was definitely better here.  I thought they roasted their own, but, cruising their website, I can't really tell where they get it from.

Kind of a weird note to end the coffee part of the trip on (well, I did make it into Crema a few more times).  The Boston trip as a whole was fantastic, Jessica & Anthony are among the coolest people I've met in the last 5 years, and I'm ridiculously glad we've stayed in touch even after they left Buffalo.  Lauren & I haven't had a vacation in a while, and my work & coffee schedule has been so nuts that we haven't had much bf/gf time, so the trip was nice for that.  Plus, saw Scott Pilgrim again (higah!), saw The Tallest Man On Earth again (double-higah!), saw the Boston Museum of Bad Art (all 3 in the same theatre, incidentally), had many awesome foods and coffees, went to Walden Pond, and watched Hush as our Buffy re-affirmation or whatever.  Great trip.

What did I learn, coffee-wise, this trip?
-Saw some neat tea shops.  Specifically, I was very intrigued by the equipment set-up at Tealuxe in Harvard Square--multiple hot-water towers at different settings for different teas, stand-alone steam stations, big cold-brew iced-tea dispensers...pretty neat.  I'm not super into tea at the moment (yet?), it kind of scares me actually.
-Red Spro, rooibos ground so it can be run through an espresso machine to make a totally decaf, supposedly very healthy...substance.  I actually like it quite a lot, have thought about running it at Spot.  Boston's the only place where I've seen it present in any significant percentage.  It's a cool decaf option.
-Lots and lots of shops with multiple roasters.  That's awesome.  I think it should become standard to see this unless you're roasting your own.  Maybe even then.
-Obviously I learned a lot about chocolate.
-Baked goods!  They are huge here.  The bar for pastries is just much higher here; or a better way to say it might be that the bar for coffee at places that are primarily bakeries is much higher.  That actually might be the biggest thing I noticed in Boston.
-And the best brews were brew-to-order, at barismo and Pavement, no surprise.  Pavement is the only high-volume shop doing brew-to-order, which is surprising and a little disheartening.  However, they seem pretty successful, Simon's is doing it at least some of the time, and Hi-Rise appears to have a decent following and are brewing all day, so there is hope.

Lots of places I didn't make it to, so they're on my list for next time: Cafe Fixe, Taste (which I hear George Howell just bought), and if I can get a tour or something I really want to see the George Howell/Terroir facility.

But!  Good job, Boston, thanks to the many baristas and other professionals at all these locations.

I have to throw a bag together and hit the hay, me and a van-ful of Buffalo baristas are heading back towards Boston for the MANE coffee conference in Providence, RI.  I'll keep you posted.