One man’s opinion. Ask me tomorrow and I’m likely to tell you something completely different.
Roasters
1. Onyx
2. Heart
3. Verve
4. Sweet Bloom
5. Counter Culture
DMV Cafés
1. Café Unido
2. The Coffee Bar (Shaw)
3. Baked & Wired
4. Dua Coffee DC
5. Northside Social (Arlington)
HM (alphabetically): Kaldi Social House (Silver Spring), Lost Sock, Maketto, Swings (Alexandria), Takoma Bev Co, Vigilante (Hyattsville)
It’s been more than 15 months since the pandemic hit and for those of us who work in DC’s Foggy Bottom area one of many things we’ve lost is Sami’s Coffee Kiosk. The space at the corner of 22nd & Virginia which used to be occupied by Sami’s cart has been empty, with no sign of a return.
The corner’s still empty, but a few weeks ago Sami resurfaced on the twitters:
I stopped in this morning to see him, and it was a delight. Friendly as ever, we had time to catch up without the usual line on the sidewalk, and the coffee was as great as always. Sami has a sunny alcove with a lot of windows, more room than he had in his cart, and has basically shifted his gear out of the cart and onto a few countertops. He told me that business has been good, and at this point he thinks he’ll be staying at Sol so long as that continues.
So DC peeps, stop by and see Sami, and support a local businessman whose livelihood has been hit hard by the pandemic. You’ll be glad you did.
If you’re headed to Stowe, Vermont, about halfway there from the highway, after you’ve passed Ben & Jerry’s and then this guy…..
….. you’ll see what at first glance looks to be a big red barn. You’re going to want to stop there, because it’s the home of one of the best specialty coffee places you’ll find just about anywhere.
Welcome to Vermont Artisan Coffee & Tea, home to a large roastery, coffee school, and coffee and tea bar.
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You may have read in the news of President Joe Biden’s visit on Cinco de Mayo to Las Gemelas, a taqueria in Washington, DC’s La Cosecha market. It’s too bad he didn’t go to the other end of La Cosecha, where he would have found one of DC’s finest coffee purveyors.
La Cosecha is a beautiful, high-end marketplace in the Union Market district, featuring merchants selling food, wine, apparel and household goods, all to showcase the diaspora of Latin American cultures. There you’ll find Café Unido, a stand in the market selling Panamanian coffees, with airy indoor and outdoor seating areas.
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Dua Coffee DC had been getting a lot of attention, including a spot in the most recent update of the Eater guide to best DC coffee shops and mention in the recently expanded Sprudge guide to Washington, DC. Loyal customers sing its praises regularly on DC social media sites. And I thought it would be interesting to try a shop centered around the coffee of Indonesia, which other than kopi luwak often gets overlooked in favor of beans grown in Africa and Central and South America.
Great local news piece on La Casa del Caffe, home of the world’s finest cup of coffee. Anna is such a treasure. Watching this should help you understand why I always go out of my way to visit any time I’m near New York city.
It should be pretty obvious that I love good coffee. I also love donuts. I’m certainly not the only one to feel this way, and definitely not the only one to love them together. Sweets balancing out a great cup of coffee is always a treat, and for whatever reason the soft and chewy mix of yeasty dough and a million tons of sugar makes for the best complement.
I thought about this when I found myself standing in a block-long line the other morning for 45 minutes in 350 F weather. I was there to buy donuts.
I was disappointed last fall to learn that DC area gelato and espresso chain Dolcezza was about to shutter almost all its retail outlets, particularly the one I frequented in Bethesda, MD. You can imagine my delight while searching for a post-lunch jolt today to find the Bethesda location remains open. Makes sense in our COVID times, given the shop’s small footprint and few tables should favor a takeout trade.
It seems the shop remains open until an unspecified end of the holiday season. Here’s hoping they stay around for Presidents Day, Memorial Day, Independence Day, Labor Day…… well, you get my drift.
New article from Bloomberg Business with the attention-getting headline “Say Goodbye to Your Local Coffee Shop in America’s Great Coffee Shake-Up“
I’d like to find the headline writer responsible for this and box their ears, but as for the article itself….. well, I’m afraid it’s all too true. The explosion in independent cafes has been a godsend for the coffee snob, but the reality is there that pre-COVID we had a lot of places that didn’t focus enough on quality and/or had shaky business models. My great fear is that the pandemic, rather than a needed correction to weed out the weaker shops, will cut far too close to the bone and wipe out the good places as well. And helping Starbucks and Dunkin is just insult to injury.
Please support your local purveyor of quality coffee, chances are they need it. Buy takeout, frequent their outdoor seating areas, order beans on line, get some merch, pick up some gift cards and give them to friends.
Many of us are finding our favorite coffee shops closed, sometimes with some notice, sometimes with none, as retail as a whole continues to suffer from the intense shocks of our COVID age. A couple recent moves:
Dolcezza, the DC area gelato and coffee purveyor, has decided to close all its shops over the next month, except for the coffee bar at the Smithsonian’s Hirshhorn Museum (which is temporarily closed), and two outlets in Fairfax, VA. The company’s focus seems to be shifting to wholesale sales of its gelato. A big loss.
Another DC chain, Peregrine, closed its outlet on 14th Street NW in late June, saying it was due to increasing rents. This strip of retail and restaurants has been one of the hottest stretches of commercial retail in the area over the past 5 years, with rising rents crowding out many independent and local businesses in favor of high end chains. They continue to operate two other outlets in DC and a pop-up in The Pug, a bar along the H Street NE corridor.
In moves not related to COVID pressures, Milwaukee’s Kickapoo Coffee has completed its name change. Say hello to Wonderstate Coffee. And DC cafe and bar Colony Club has changed its name to Doubles. The name change reflects a move away from negative associations with colonialism, particularly given the gentrification in its Park View neighborhood, and ties to their in-house ping pong table.