la.foodblogging

On a recent trip to SF I pilgrimaged to a coffee lair that I’ve been reading about on Bay Area blogs and food sites for a couple of years now.

Since many of us travel up to SF pretty regularly, and you can order fresh-roasted beans online, it seemed only a small stretch to write about Blue Bottle Coffee Co. here on la.foodblogging.

I’m also hoping against hope, that if he feels enough of a warm-fuzzy-love-vibe welling up from LA, it will compel Blue Bottle’s founder James Freeman to drive south down the I-5 and set up an outpost here in the Southland.

First off, Blue Bottle is a self-coined ‘artisan micro-roaster.’ They have one storefront situated in a garage, shared with a woodshop, on a narrow side-street in Hayes Valley. As with most areas in downtown SF, parking is tuff, unless you park illegally with a driver waiting behind the wheel, the engine runnning, a la Bourne Supremacy. It may not be the most relaxing way to savor the flavor, but it’s a tenable LA approach, when driving from one destination in Fog City to another.

I waited in a short line to order a mocha and an iced coffee. Although the mochas are normally made with Sur del Lago chocolate, chipped off a big bar and melted into chocolate liquid, I was advised that the food processor was on the mend and that Scharffen Berger was being used instead. This was told to me in a conscience-stricken tone, if you can believe it. Even the best coffee shops in LA — Urth and Casbah, IMO — use canned powdered Ghiradhelli cocoa — and these guys are apologizing about melting down blocks of Scharffen Berger? Ha! Coffee Table uses economy cans of Hershey’s syrup, for god’s sake.

My mate is a bred-in-the-bone Bay Area coffee snob, he had the java chip implanted at SF General on the day he was born. He took one sip of his iced coffee and stared at me. “What’s in this?!” I was too busy letting my mocha course through my bloodstream to answer. Warm, round smooth — nothing like the smokey, chipped edginess of Urth or Peet’s. We’re talking smooth, almost flowery and undoubtedly rich.

Despite the huge detour prior to a very long drive home to LA I talked my mate into going back the next day. This time he went for the real taste test, a double espresso, he didn’t deak around with the doctored iced coffee.

“The highest achievement, I think, is just a straight shot of espresso,” Freeman told SF Chron back in ‘03. “Coffee itself is very sexual. Espresso is nerdy. You have to have the soul of a poet and the heart of a band nerd to get everything right.”

I got another mocha made with the Sur del Lago this time. This is a coffee experience like no other. If you love coffee just try this place and add it to your coffee vocabulary. There is something very unique, handmade and wonderful going on with Blue Bottle. We bought a 1/2 lb. of Yemen and we’ve been making our own brews at home —  amazed that any bean and roast could taste so good.

(In adddition to BBCC’s small store-front in Hayes Valley, Blue Bottle coffee is also brewed in SF restaurants such as A16, Fifth Floor, Wilkes Bashford, SF Tacubaya, Frog Hollow Farm Cafe, Sketch ice cream, Bittersweet, and pizzetta 211.)

Blue Bottle Coffee Co.
315 Linden Street (at Gough)
Hayes Valley, San Francisco
510.653.3394