San Francisco is a Coffee Playground – NYTimes.com

Posted on April 9, 2010 by

At least according to Eileen Hassi of Ritual Coffee it is. And who can blame her? Managing both Ben and Steve (featured above) must feel like playground duty. Also featured in yesterday’s New York Times article are Blue Bottle, Ecco Caffe, Four Barrel, Barefoot, and Sight Glass. Although for a more detailed perspective on the state of San Francisco coffee you should definitely read Chris Tacy’s series.

(via West Coast Coffee Roasters Are Lengthening Their Reach – NYTimes.com.)

  • http://godshot.blogspot.com Malachi

    While I am as big a cheerleader for my town’s coffee as anyone – I cannot with a straight face agree with the idea that we’re now on par with Seattle and Portland.

    I think we’ve made HUGE strides in the last 5 years and I’m hopeful that we’ll continue to push forward. But we’ve still got a long way to go to even challenge for the position of US coffee leaders.

    It’s a decent article. Better than I’ve grown to expect in many ways. I only counted 5 factual errors and one very misleading bit of poor wording. For mass market coverage that’s damn good.

    My primary complaint is that it seems like most of those interviewed were trying to steer him towards the “it’s about the coffee now, not the preparation” and he just didn’t want to hear it. As a result, almost all of the article is about preparation. While the idea that espresso preparation is a “solved problem” is clearly laughable, the truth is that all of us are moving on from a focus on preparation to a focus on the beans (not the “blends” but the beans). Seasonality is just one element of this new focus.

    Oh… and thanks for the shout-out!

  • http://shotzombies.com Mike

    As usual, I think that all press is good press. But I agree with all of your points. Factual errors aside, the tone of this piece did little justice to the beans themselves, and the intense focus some of these people have towards quality.

  • gabe

    The whole concept of responding to this piece as “all press is good press” unfortunately shows the need for justification for such a poorly written piece. It did NOTHING for any of the companies mentioned and it certainly does not give the average and not so average customer ANY idea of what coffee is truly like in San Francisco. It did a disservice to coffee as an industry, and to the “workers” that are behind the scenes not in a playground, but in an environment of quality control, experimentation and doing work at origin.