Boston: Hi-Rise, Crema, Sofra, Barismo

Day 2 in Boston!

Hi-Rise at the Blacksmith House

56 Brattle St, Cambridge

Hi-Rise seems primarily to be a bakery and sandwich-centric café on 208 Concord Ave, which I haven't visited, but they also have this café just around the corner from me in Harvard Square.  As soon as I walked in I could tell this place was kinda third-wave, and I was very impressed with my cap, pulled once more with barismo's 7 espresso.

I was served by their main barista/manager for a little bit, and once I'd self-identified in the coffee geek direction we talked about the local scene a little.

The space is small, but interesting, with seating outside and upstairs.  I really liked the upstairs section, since it's just a house, and feels like it.

They also do brew-to-order coffee using Clevers.  In addition to a few coffees from barismo, they were also offering a selection from Ritual: score another point for multiple roasters.  All in all, pretty impressed.

Crema Café

27 Brattle St., Cambridge

Crema is kind of the stand-by coffee shop in Harvard Square, and I'm pretty impressed with the quality.  I've been happy with all the espresso drinks: latte art and excellent shots.  They do some sandwiches and light fare in addition to pastries, all pretty great; I tried the rosemary goat cheese & walnut sandwich, quite nice, and all the pastries were excellent.

I think what impresses me most with Crema is the quality relative to how busy they are: I haven't seen it less than packed, and the line seems unending.  Nonetheless, the service & bar quality have always been high for me.  It's a shame they're not doing any brew-to-order other than espresso, but they are using some excellent Terroir coffee, with lots of origin photos on the wall--courtesy George Howell, I'm assuming.  I wish I had some more pictures in here, but it's always pretty crowded and busy.  Definitely worth checking out if you're in the area.

Sofra Bakery

1 Belmont St., Cambridge

Sofra's primarily a Mediterranean bakery and restaurant, but they do their coffee well, and it seems to have a good dose of that third place thing going on.

Spinach & cheese flatbread, kohlrabi pancakes

Breakfast and lunch options are good, but the bakery case is even better.  We wound up taking a bag to go, just because we couldn't try enough in one sitting (and because otherwise I'd have to pretend that earthquake chocolate cookies are an acceptable meal option).

Given the size of their menu and baked good selection, and the huge amount of other stuff they have on sale (cookbooks, spices, various prepared foods), it's really kind of amazing to see them also pull a great shot of espresso.

With an orange-glazed cinnamon "morning roll"

They offer the usual assortment of espresso drinks using Rao's coffee, and  Turkish coffee is also on the menu.  Is there a non-nationally-biased word for that?  Sofra's also has "red spro" lattes, which I've seen a couple places in Boston--Crema offers it as well.

I definitely like rooibos tea, and red spro is an interesting total decaf option--and I like that it allows a barista to serve a drink with perfectly textured milk, when otherwise the caffeine-fearing customer would just get an herbal tea.  I looked into getting this going in Buffalo, got some samples and messed around with it...  The only real issue I have with it is committing a group-head on the Marzocco to it (well, that and seeing if enough of it sells to make buying it in bulk worthwhile).  Still, something to look for at Spot in the future, even if only as a temporary featured drink.

barismo

169 Massachusetts Ave, Arlington

Up to this point, the most exciting new coffee I've had in Boston is barismo's espresso.  They've got a pretty good rep, and they're also one of the key conduits for Hario's awesome coffee equipment right now in the US.  I emailed them about visiting their roasting facilities and was invited to "come geek out", so I was pretty stoked to go check them out.

They have a full café set-up, with a GB/5 and a slew of grinders and brewers.  However, it's pretty clear that they mainly use all this to test coffee, not to actually exist as a café--there's a menu board, but no chairs or tables.  I actually really like that they keep the option of selling coffee by the cup to anyone who happens to wander in, even though they're not trying to be a coffee bar.

What impressed me most about this facility is the small size of the roasters: they are working in 7 pound batches.  7 pounds.  I thought I misheard at first.  This is really artisan coffee, and it shows in the cup.

I had a singularly awesome cup of a Guatemalan coffee (El Bosque), prepared in a vac-pot.  A really distinctive cup, with lots of floral sweetness.  I grabbed a bag of their Cup of Excellence-winning Honduras to take home.

I also got to check out a prototype of the Luminaire hot water dispenser.  If you had told me, 5 years ago, that I would be this interested in exactly controlling the temperature and flow-rate of hot water, I don't know what I would have thought.  Since getting a brew-bar of some kind rolling in Buffalo is one my highest priorities, I'm real keen on checking out all the options, and this LB-1 is the less expensive, maybe-superior counterpart to the Marco Uber Boiler, which I think is STILL not exactly on the market.  (Check out a review of the Luminaire prototype on Jay's Strange Blog.)

The barismo guys love it, which I can understand in terms of dialing in a coffee as exactly as possible.  Still not sure how useful this thing would be in a busy commercial setting, though.  I'm having a hard time picturing Spot Elmwood work effectively with less than 4-cup rail system--would I need 4 water dispensers?  Also, I really like the show of the pour-over rail, and the ease of talking over it to the customer--a row of water towers could take away from both of those.  That said, this kind of precision water delivery will definitely have a place in some coffee environments--roasters testing coffees, slow-coffee bars, niche shops, maybe restaurants who just want to do the occasional cup with gourmet exactitude.

Anyway, I'm really glad I got up to check out barismo's place.  This is easily the most third-wave, artisan approach to roasting I've seen in action.

I still have a few more days in Boston, with many coffee things on my list...I think I need to find a better way to do these coffee-benders-and-then-blog things, because I keep trying to write smack in the middle of a massive caffeine crash every night, which I realize is not the best way to generate outstanding prose.  Next post, look for a slight detour away from coffee...