52 Brattle Street, Cambridge
Burdick's is a pretty elegant space--lots of pale wood-grain, mirrors, and gold tones, nice benches and tables. I like the old botanical color-plates a lot. I hear that they are thinking about removing some of their cases and shelves to allow more seating--I never saw it slammed when I was walking by, but their always seemed to be at least a handful of people enjoying a drink.
However, what really grabbed my attention was a sign in the window offering "single-origin chocolate", hot or iced. I really like sipping chocolate anyway, so the idea of an SO is definitely intriguing.
The person who served me (chocolatier?) was extremely helpful and informative, pretty much the perfect mix of service and education. When I asked about the single-origin chocolate, she first grabbed me a little sample of their standard chocolate blend to compare against, and then suggested a few of her favorites, with flavor and production notes.
I decided to try the Grenada, and I loved it. I've never really thought about coffee having nuanced flavors beyond cocoa content and added ingredients, so it was interesting to sit and try and actually notice the complexity of this coffee (the banana was up front, and a lot of complex spicey/fruity things going on under that).
I kind of knew, at the beginning of the day, that chocolate has a ton of parallels to coffee. Now, here I am, realizing that my appreciation of chocolate has been about as superficial as the people who are fixated on roast level and added flavors in coffee. Interesting. The Burdick's chocolatiers are the first people I've heard talk about terroir relative to chocolate (one of the reasons they like cacoa from Grenada), and my server had the perfect mix of knowledge and passion about the product without overwhelming me--something that I still encounter very rarely even in coffee shops that are serving great coffee.
Burdick's has a lot of chocolate confectionary for sale, and they looked like they knew what they were doing with espresso-based drinks, but it's really the drinking chocolate bar aspect that appeals to me. The sizes range from 4 to 12 oz, I believe, with prices in the $2-5 range. It's a nice change of pace, to sit and slowly drink some awesome chocolate instead of an espresso drink--and the atmosphere is a nice change too, classy without being scary, quiet without being library-like.
Braving the rains, we made our way up to Somerville, where we grabbed a quick bite at the All Star Sandwich Bar. I had a falafel "burger"--good idea, much less sloppy to eat, easier to load up with other goodies. Thumbs up.
Then, we wandered around trying to find our way to the Taza plant for our tour. It's kind of set back on a weird street, and we walked past it a few times before Lauren's Droid came to the rescue.
I've seen Taza chocolate in nearly every café I've visited in the Boston area, and saw them at a little farmer's market as well--they've got very good coverage. I liked the samples I'd had last year when I visited, and the fact that they are using a coffee-type "Direct Trade" model for chocolate is pretty interesting, so I was really looking forward to the tour.
Okay, so, I haven't had a tour of any big artisan coffee roasters, but this blew away any coffee tour I've ever heard of, while at the same time focusing on pretty much the exact kind of thing I'd like to focus on for a coffee tour.
Parallels galore.
Our tour guides were excellent, and we had two for just three of us, so it was very relaxed and informal, with lots of time to ask and answer questions. (I was mentally comparing it to the Hershey Park tour the entire time, which most Pennsylvanians endure at one point or another. The Hershey tour is totally automated, pretty fake, I'm pretty sure you never see chocolate actually being produced, but it does include animatronic, singing cows.)
I actually had to rein my geek in a little bit when our tour guides whipped out phrases like "bean to bar" or emphasized that coffee chocolate is a fruit, with that range of flavors and seasonality. I'd never thought about the fact that there must be different species or varietals of chocolate, but, of course, there are. Taza is using mostly (totally?) the criollo cultivar, which sounds a lot like Coffea arabica in that it is more finicky, less productive, and way more sweet/aromatic than other varieties.
I really wish Michael, my roaster, could have been here to check out their roasting set-up. Pretty cool machine. I was also kind of flabbergasted by their "winnower", which separates the meat of the bean from the shell:
Apparently they got it used in the Dominican Republic somewhere, went down and disassembled it and shipped it back.
You can tell that this is a cool company, real committed. Apparently, founder Alex Whitmore spent a lot of time in Mexico ("Oaxaca is his food mecca") learning about traditional stone-ground chocolate techniques.
Hand-dressed burrs millstones? My inner equipment geek is bouncing off the walls, not sure what my outer geek was doing.
We basically got to walk through the whole facility, except for the hot-room where the coffee is milled. They call this room the "fishbowl", though, because it has windows on all sides for us touristy types.
All in all, best $5 I've spent in a long time. We probably ate that much in samples along the way, which were geared towards showing off the way that different production methods affect flavor. Two things jump out at me with Taza's chocolate--first off, just the complexity of the chocolate flavor. It's kind of an unexpected rabbit-hole for me, actually, because one of the big epiphanies for me in coffee has been realizing that there is no "coffee flavor": that's just the total averaging out of many other flavors. "Chocolate" is one of the words I use to describe some coffees, and now I'm realizing that chocolate is the same--it's actually a complex mix of flavors that just average out, particularly in mass-production stuff, to "one" chocolate flavor. Second thing that jumps out is texture: Taza might be the only place I've encountered chocolate with interesting texture, due to their coarse grinding methods.
So, yeah, fantastic tour. I've been trying to decide for a while if I want to compete in the barista championships this coming spring, and I might want to do something with chocolate for a specialty drink--Taza has me thinking that I need to really do some research on espresso/chocolate pairing. Maybe unsweetened--I'd never tasted straight cocoa nibs before, and I was getting all kinds of complexity out of it once my tongue got past the slight bitterness.
A good day for chocolate! Single-origin, direct-trade, bean-to-bar focus...I'm impressed. Coffee scene today was not so good (checked out 1369's main location, and while my cap wasn't bad it wasn't anything to blog about), but we've still got some places to check out in the city proper.
I kind of knew, at the beginning of the day, that chocolate has a ton of parallels to coffee. Now, here I am, realizing that my appreciation of chocolate has been about as superficial as the people who are fixated on roast level and added flavors in coffee. Interesting. The Burdick's chocolatiers are the first people I've heard talk about terroir relative to chocolate (one of the reasons they like cacoa from Grenada), and my server had the perfect mix of knowledge and passion about the product without overwhelming me--something that I still encounter very rarely even in coffee shops that are serving great coffee.
Burdick's has a lot of chocolate confectionary for sale, and they looked like they knew what they were doing with espresso-based drinks, but it's really the drinking chocolate bar aspect that appeals to me. The sizes range from 4 to 12 oz, I believe, with prices in the $2-5 range. It's a nice change of pace, to sit and slowly drink some awesome chocolate instead of an espresso drink--and the atmosphere is a nice change too, classy without being scary, quiet without being library-like.
561 Windsor St, Somerville
Then, we wandered around trying to find our way to the Taza plant for our tour. It's kind of set back on a weird street, and we walked past it a few times before Lauren's Droid came to the rescue.
I've seen Taza chocolate in nearly every café I've visited in the Boston area, and saw them at a little farmer's market as well--they've got very good coverage. I liked the samples I'd had last year when I visited, and the fact that they are using a coffee-type "Direct Trade" model for chocolate is pretty interesting, so I was really looking forward to the tour.
Parallels galore.
Our tour guides were excellent, and we had two for just three of us, so it was very relaxed and informal, with lots of time to ask and answer questions. (I was mentally comparing it to the Hershey Park tour the entire time, which most Pennsylvanians endure at one point or another. The Hershey tour is totally automated, pretty fake, I'm pretty sure you never see chocolate actually being produced, but it does include animatronic, singing cows.)
You can tell that this is a cool company, real committed. Apparently, founder Alex Whitmore spent a lot of time in Mexico ("Oaxaca is his food mecca") learning about traditional stone-ground chocolate techniques.
All in all, best $5 I've spent in a long time. We probably ate that much in samples along the way, which were geared towards showing off the way that different production methods affect flavor. Two things jump out at me with Taza's chocolate--first off, just the complexity of the chocolate flavor. It's kind of an unexpected rabbit-hole for me, actually, because one of the big epiphanies for me in coffee has been realizing that there is no "coffee flavor": that's just the total averaging out of many other flavors. "Chocolate" is one of the words I use to describe some coffees, and now I'm realizing that chocolate is the same--it's actually a complex mix of flavors that just average out, particularly in mass-production stuff, to "one" chocolate flavor. Second thing that jumps out is texture: Taza might be the only place I've encountered chocolate with interesting texture, due to their coarse grinding methods.
So, yeah, fantastic tour. I've been trying to decide for a while if I want to compete in the barista championships this coming spring, and I might want to do something with chocolate for a specialty drink--Taza has me thinking that I need to really do some research on espresso/chocolate pairing. Maybe unsweetened--I'd never tasted straight cocoa nibs before, and I was getting all kinds of complexity out of it once my tongue got past the slight bitterness.
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| At the end of the tour you're pretty much bound to buy a ton of chocolate anyway. These are the "Mexicano" disks; they have a range of interesting and simple ingredients added. I really like the Salt & Pepper. |
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