Coffee, It's a Helluva Drug

well, since you asked… DMV power rankings

If you’ve spent more than 2 minutes on this site, it won’t surprise you that I’m known to friends and colleagues as “the coffee guy.” More than a few times I’m asked by someone new to town which coffee places they really have to try, and I’m often unprepared for the question.

I’m going to give it a go here. No copping out with ties or honorable mentions. No explanations, other than I’ve limited myself geographically to my understanding of the DC metro area.* No fretting about coffee vs service vs food vs whatever other factors should be considered. Ask me tomorrow and I’ll give you a different answer, and there are a lot of great places not listed, but here are one guy’s rankings of the very best of the best in and near the nation’s capital.

Washington, DC
1. The Coffee Bar (Shaw)
2. Baked & Wired
3. Doubles
4. Café Unido (La Cosecha)
5. Lost Sock
6. Elle
7. Ebenezer’s
8. Simona
9. Little Hat
10. Dua

Maryland
1. Vigilante (Hyattsville)
2. Kaldi’s
3. Takoma Bev Co
4. Vigilante (College Park)

Virginia
1. Rare Bird
2. Rossana to You
3. Caffe Amouri
4. Swings
5. Kaldi’s
6. Simona

* – apologies to the rest of Virginia and Maryland and the eastern portion of West Virginia – I’m looking at you, Red Rooster, Hopscotch, Curate, and Lost Dog.

guest post: Vancouver coffee

Submitted by my pal Rachel. Enjoy. – Matty

After a year of living in North Vancouver, British Columbia, I can attest to the very high quality of local coffee shops. That said, let me confess that this review is very limited to my neighborhood; Lonsdale – a pretty, mellow community with stunning views of the North Shore mountains, Vancouver Harbor, and the city skyline. I’ve also thrown in a bonus shop that’s a short drive up the road and just too delightful to omit. Let me also confess that I am a cappuccino drinker and, when I rate coffee, that is my brew. In Vancouver, most coffee shops also sell lovely pastries, made locally or in-house, and no review would be complete without discussing the treats.

In Lonsdale:

BEAN ON 5TH (official name: Bean Around the World – 5th & Chesterfield)
506 Chesterfield Avenue, North Vancouver, BC
https://batwcoffee.com

Coffee: Consistently excellent

Ambiance: Cozy garden outside, casual and inviting inside

Pastry: All very delicious, but the star of the show is the chocolate bread pudding, only available on weekends. It is sublime; crusty, gooey, and rich. Cookies, blueberry loaf, and muffins are also above average.

Location: An unexpected delight on a quiet, residential street just a couple of blocks from Lonsdale Avenue, the commercial heart of Lonsdale. With plentiful outdoor seating on a shady patio, this is a great place to take your dog out to coffee. Or, if you are like me this past year and temporarily dogless, this is where you go to bother other coffee drinkers with your need to pet their dog.

Salt & Pepper Diner song o’ the day for May 18

This is very special to me. My nephew is the frontman for Brave Face, a band in Columbus, OH, and last night they released a new album. I’m in the middle of my third or fourth consecutive straight run through the album, and I’m thinking this is the song I’ll listen to 21x times in a row.

Enjoy it, check out the rest of the album, and be sure to find & support hard-working artists looking to break out.

wait…….

I stopped this morning at Baked & Wired, one of the best coffee places in DC. While I was waiting to order I saw something on the posted menu that I never noticed before.

Double take….. is that……

It is! Thank you B&W people, well done you!

Salt & Pepper Diner Song of the Day for April 19

This one evokes a certain time and place for me, and always brings a smile to my face because it was a favorite of my son back when he was a wee little lad. Also I love the rhythm section on this banger, and singing along with it (at full volume – badly) in the car while listening to it 21x in a row.

And here’s a bonus song o’ the day that’s been making the rounds on the twitters this week in celebration of Rick Moranis’ birthday. Those of a certain age will get it, particularly those of us who can still quote dialogue from every SCTV episode, but you youngsters may stare and blink and wonder what’s going on here and, you know, is it supposed to be funny?

Embedding is disabled for this one, so just click on the link above or here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4JLbhEUE_5U

one more spring trip

As I’ve posted recently, I’ve been very lucky this spring to travel to Arizona for baseball spring training, and to Portugal with my family. Last week I enjoyed one more very special trip, driving in the US south, and of course visited some coffee places. I neglected to do my usual rounds of picture taking, but we may be better off without them.

I’ve been a big fan of Red Rooster Coffee for a while now, enjoying their coffee at some of the best DC-area cafés. Their coffee’s flavor profiles are often bold, but offer layers of complexity that make them more interesting that just smacking you in the face. I’ve wanted to visit their café and roastery, but Floyd, VA is a bit far from where I live, I’m not a bluegrass fan so a visit to Floydfest isn’t in the cards, and Floyd hasn’t been on the way to places I’ve gone before. This trip gave me the opportunity to route myself in their direction, so I built a stop into the itinerary.

odds ‘n ends

Here are a couple random things bouncing around my mind. If you’re of a certain age, you’ll understand why I apologize in advance if this comes across like an old Larry King column in USA Today.

I shuddered watching James Vowles, Williams Racing’s new team principal, explain on Netflix’s Drive to Survive that he only has caffeine on race day, because daily intake means the caffeine boost only takes you to a regular state instead of an elevated state. This continues to haunt me.

A current pet peeve is businesses that don’t accept cash, and that I only seem to find them when I want to pay with cash.

My social media feeds are full of ads for Cometeer, a company that flash-freezes specialty coffee that you reconstitute in hot water. I wasn’t interested until I looked at their website, where some of my favorite roasters’ coffee is available. Now I’d like to give it a whirl, but they ship only in boxes of 32, which I’m finding a high barrier to trying it out. #firstworldproblems

The algorithms have also decided I would be interested in this. Heavy emphasis on pulling in investors isn’t exactly a draw, let alone the idea of “friendly robot baristas.” I for one am not ready to welcome our new robot overlords, but if you decide to try it you may want to speak with Old Glory Insurance first.

road trip: Portugal

I recently returned from an amazing week’s vacay with my family. Now I understand why everyone has been there, is there, is planning to go there, or wants to go there. We were blessed with mostly magical weather, manageable crowds, terrific food and drink, and very warm and friendly people.

We were mostly in Lisbon and Porto, with a few other stops. I had great coffee, though unfortunately I didn’t have the opportunity to visit as many places as I would have liked in Porto. To spare my family I didn’t go through my usual picture taking frenzy at cafés, so here’s a list interspersed with the usual tourist pics – those of you who follow my social media accounts have likely seen these – and a couple non-coffee things.

First, a tip for anyone traveling anywhere in Europe, European Coffee Trip is *the* guide you need to find specialty cafés and roasters. It quickly became my primary coffee resource for this trip.

view from the bedroom of our AirBnB in Porto

COFFEE – Porto

Combi Coffee
Fábrica Coffee Roasters (Rua do Souto)

Phoenix part 4 (fin)

fourth & final in a series of four posts

Let’s wrap up the Phoenix field report. Two cafés left to cover.

WINDOW COFFEE BAR (Melrose)

*where’s Frank? Dino? Sammy? Joey Bishop?*

from the second you pull up to the Royale complex, which houses this outlet of Window Coffee Bar, you’re awash in 60’s Vegas cool and invited to find your inner rat packer as you relax in a bright metal chair on the astroturfed courtyard
the café is bright and colorful, and it took a lot of willpower not to take home one of their really cool mugs
great coffee, teas (I went back for pictures and got a really good iced herbal tea), and pastries – another fine pop tart, this one raspberry and pear

*concrete floor, check; cool art, check; light wood…….*

*I’ll take one of the mugs from the bottom shelf, please*

*pardon me, sir, do you know Angie Dickinson?*

Phoenix part 3

third in a series of four posts

Yes, there’s more…….

BERDENA

in a nice block of old town Scottsdale
airy, bright, beautiful tiles, and a sweet baby blue Slayer espresso machine
don’t make the same mistake I made by stopping on Sunday morning, the family breakfast/brunch crowd will guarantee a long wait