Not that there's anything wrong with that.
Wisconsin's very own Sprecher's was proclaimed best root beer, like, ever, by a New York Times review.
Now, why is that so edifying to us here at Stella? Well, it's because you can get it here, along with other fine Sprecher's offerings, like Cream Soda, Ginger Ale, and Puma Kola.
Did you hear that? Best root beer, right here at Stella.
I know it's heresy, but I really dislike Trader Joe's. One of Stella customers dispelled the rumor that one is coming to the new building on Granville and Broadway, and I'm not the least bit disappointed.
If I did like that place, or at least emulated its ways, Stella would have a different business model. Our lattes would cost a buck fifty, but there would be no need to spring for the fancy beans, the fancy machine, or all that costly barista training. We would offer bona fide, albeit low-quality versions of stuff that appeals to today's young sophisticates.
Of course, this business model works remarkably well for Trader Joe's. The little plaza it shares with CB2 is forever abuzz with Volkswagens and Subarus. CB2 must be ecstatic about the spillover business.
The business model works best of all, it seems, for three-buck Chuck, also known as Charles Shaw Shiraz, which retails there for $2.99. Apropos, did you know they call it two-buck Chuck in California? Some crazy shit, that.
As you walk into the store, you see boxes of the Chuck stacked high against a wall. You will also see those Jetta/Outback drivers loading up on the Chuck. The Outback people even have the foresight to get entire boxes. The Chuck is used for dinner, entertaining, bringing the requisite bottle of wine to a party, the works. Where once guests shot inquisitive looks at the pretty labels, wondering how much the bottle cost, today certainty rules. How lovely and strange, no? Well, it's not that lovely, and it's surely not strange. Moreover, the same will happen to coffee soon.
The other day I read a feature on CNN Money about Fred Franzia, or Mr. Three-Buck Chuck. He is not to be confused with Mr. Wine-in-a-Box. That's a cousin of his. Anyway, Mr. Three-Buck-Chuck is an extremely successful businessman who espouses a philosophy, and he'll explain it to anyone who'll listen, especially if it will end up in print. His claim is that only an idiot would pay more than $10 for a bottle of wine, and he wants to convert the world to that point of view. Of course, it's all a bunch of bullshit and he knows it. A sixty-dollar bottle can blow you away. Even a twenty-five dollar one can, if you are know how to pick'em.
The whole thing is just an act he puts on, a persona that he uses to market his product. Still, in the process he is, in fact, fighting pretentiousness. He sells a bona fide, although low quality, cab that is priced as low as it can go. Its popularity makes it impossible for anyone to charge ten bucks for a bottle of crappy wine.
Today you can find a variety of wines between $4 and $20 in your neighborhood liquor store. They all taste about the same - sour and, well, cheap. But, if you were to opt for Whole Foods instead, the stuff there is quite good. This is mostly because Whole Foods is Trader Joe's closest competitor, especially in the crunchy demographic. Surely, you can't very well sell swill for $10 if the other guy charges $2.99.
The neighborhood guys are catching up. The Korean dude underneath the Sheridan El is the biggest one in my hood, and he's improved his selection a lot in the last year or two. Once the wine market truly matures here in the United States, we will have carton wine on supermarket shelves. Check out exhibit A, from the Wine90 blog.
Note the price. Cheap, yes? No one brings that stuff to parties, because they can pick up something nice for 8 euros. We can't, because most of us still can't tell the difference. We are getting there, though.
Now, the coffee market is a different story. Here in the Chicago area, there are only a few shops that control the quality of their espresso. There are hundreds that don't, including Starbucks, but they all charge the same for a latte, and get away with it. Dunkin Donuts is the one trying to undersell everyone, but apparently their war is not a holy one - they only knock off about 10%.
One day, someone will force most of these places to lower prices or raise quality. Of course, we here at Stella Espresso are not afraid, because we - brace for a shameless plug right here - we chose to start with quality. Actually, the Three-Buck-Chuck of latte would do us a favor - eliminate most of the competition in one fell swoop. Bring it on.
Welcome back to Coffee Talk. After a bit of a hiatus, we're back to talk about coffee, New York, daughters, dogs. No big whoop. Stop me if you're too young to get this.
Well, Maya and I crossed the pond for the first time in 9 years. I am ecstatic to report that Paris has not changed a bit. I had my doubts, at first. The view from our hotel in Bagnolet, a few hundred feet outside the city limits, was a dead ringer for New Jersey, complete with the turnpike.
But, cross the turnpike, and suddenly, you are in Paris. It's the outskirts, so the men at the bistro bar will be Africans in tracksuits and the Vietnamese owner will speak some of the funniest French you'll ever hear. Still, all the accouterments of bistro culture are as present as they are on the Champs-Elysees.
Just like in the posh 8th arrondissement, the uniformed waiter will approach you right away, take your order, and if coffee is what you want, he will be back within a minute with two tiny cups on a tiny tray. Just like anywhere in Paris, he will deftly slide them off the tray one-handed, with a flourish, and add a few paper-wrapped sugar-cubes. And just like anywhere in Paris, the coffee will taste like shit. Sandy, bitter and vile, it'll deliver a good jolt of caffeine and a long-lasting aftertaste that will linger until you capitulate and smoke a cigarette, even though you quit years ago.
No one knows why coffee in Paris is as bad as it is. Most blame the 'zinc Mafia' - a clan of migrants from Auvergne that reportedly have a stranglehold on bean distribution. If you dare serve single-origin coffee, the Auvergnois will kneecap your mom. I don't buy it. I mean, is it so hard to imagine a city, or even a whole country that consumes huge amounts of really disgusting coffee?
When you pick up a 32-ouncer of hot swill at a gas station outside Wichita, you don't have the same expectations as when you are served a demitasse on the Rue Rivoli. In reality, though, the two situations are identical. They are both about ritual and caffeine, and neither is about coffee.
At the end, the whole thing just serves to underline the differences between the two cultures. Americans like things big. The French like them pretty. Both borrow, rather unsuccessfully, from the Italians, to make the experience of feeding their addictions more palatable.
I know - the milk is a bit too bubbly, the rosetta looks more like a Christmas tree, but I did it all by myself, so there!
Yes, I am talking to you.
If you are sitting at home, thinking about how to properly caffeinate yourself before you make that trek to your parents' house in Park Forest (or is Forest Park?), you have three more hours before we starting pouring the magic potion into the sink.
So I walk into Stella one day...
Wait, not so fast. First, let me tell you something. Whenever I walk into Stella - my shop, my flesh and blood - everything around me sort of jumps into focus. I can make out muffled conversations in the corners. I can see the fly buzzing against the back wall. Suddenly, I am Tobey Maguire after he slips on his Spiderman outfit. Everything around me slows down and grows more quiet. I think I am supposed be using an oxymoron here, like "deafening silence", or else "silent cacophony". But I've made my point. Back to the story.
...and everything leaps into sharp focus. I can discern muffled conversations in corners. I see a fly buzzing against the back wall. At a table up front, two guys grab my attention. They are young guys, sporting bargain-basement muted-color clothing and homemade haircuts. They are taking turns talking to a girl, their eyes fixated on her. Pinned to their chests are what I first take for name tags, except they are not. They are little plaques, with the words 'The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints'. The letters that spell 'Jesus' are large, they dwarf all the other letters. I recognize that agitprop trick. I remember the many tiny "all hail's" clinging to a giant "Communist Party", back in my own muted-color childhood. The girl is listening to the two guys talk. She is nodding. It must be going well.
When I slip behind the counter, I see Maya gently arching her eyebrows in the direction of the table.
"I know," I say, "indoctrination in progress."
"No," she whispers, "they didn't buy anything." She whispered it quietly, in Russian, which we hardly use any more, as if deeply embarrassed by the whole thing. She was right - I was not so eagle-eyed, after all. Their table was conspicuously bare.
Now, I have to be honest here. I vacillated. I tried to send Maya into battle. I sat at the counter, within earshot of the interlopers' conversation, listening to them drone on about the Bible and 'the Christian life'. At the end, I could stomach the irony no longer. I was going in.
"Hello", I said, sidling up to their table. I did not want them to see me coming. "Can I get you guys anything?"
I focused on one of the guys. I stared deep into his steely Hitler Jugend eyes, searching for a spark, but there was none.
"I'm fine," he said, and looked over to his companion, as did I. I sized him up, thinking about what was going to happen if I had to ask them to leave. His military posture did not bode well for me.
"I'm OK," said the other missionary. He shrugged his shoulders and folded his arms. I figured the other guy must be the leader.
"Well," I said, looking over at the girl, "if you guys would like to stay.."
"I'd like a chai!" The girl blurted that out, as if she was making an instinctive save, not even knowing what the words meant. When I inquired about the size, she seemed puzzled.
They were out of there a few minutes later, but I did not even not know it, because right after the rapprochement, all hell broke loose behind the counter. Our espresso machine began spewing something that was not espresso, an Intelligentsia technician appeared, the machine was taken apart. We went deep into damage control mode, and I became completely absorbed in this new crisis.
As I stood there, discussing yet another inconsistency with the tech, all of a sudden, things slowed down for me. The room came into sharp focus, and I could see the tech, Maya, myself, hear our conversation and all the other conversations in the place. Right there, in the deafening silence of my brain, it hit me. I was being punished.
You see, there is a reason John Smith picked Utah, of all places. The sky is very close in the high desert. Standing on those vermilion cliffs, you really sense the presence of the Big Man Upstairs. So, it was really a piece of cake for those boys to text someone back home and have them beam up a message for the Lord to mete out some quickie punishment.
It makes perfect sense, you know. When they were walking out, they did not look back. It must be because they did not want to turn into pillars of salt. Even the girl did not look back. Oh, they knew. They totally knew. And seriously, who wants to become a pillar of salt?
Well, now the bullshit is so thick my Wellies are getting stuck. One thing is true, though. I do not believe the Bible, but these boys do, so what gives? Did they think saving a wayward soul was worth the minor sin of free-loading? Were they simply broke and too chicken to admit it in front of the girl?
I suspect the LDS believes it to be sound fiscal policy to pass the cost of saving souls onto heathens, which is why their missionaries are forced to exist on a minuscule allowance. Well, if that's their policy, so be it, but it ain't gonna be this heathen paying for it.
So Maya and I walked into Cafe Grumpy in Brooklyn a couple of weeks ago.
I didn't want a plain old latte, so I asked the barista if Grumpy made anything with more milk than a macchiato but not as much as a latte:
(barista) - Oh yeah, I can make you a (unintelligible)
(moi) - You can make me a what?
(barista) - a (unintelligible)
(moi) - What is that?
(barista) - Oh, it's like a barista drink - two shots of espresso and a little bit of steamed milk. Some baristas from San Francisco invented it and named it after the Ikea cup they served it in. You know, (unintelligible).
(moi) - Interesting. Can you say it again so I remember it?
The girl leans toward me, looks me straight in the eye, and slowly utters:
(barista) - (unintelligible).
(moi) - Ok, I'll have me one of those, please
The drink was almost as perfect as her George Costanza mumble. I think I make a better (unintelligible). Actually, here at Stella, we love (unintelligible) and take great pride in it. It is sort of our thing. We serve two kinds of (unintelligible) - a traditional latte and a cortado. The former has more milk then the latter, but they both really test the barista's chops and showcase their skills. An (unintelligible) is what I make for myself when I report to Stella.
I scoured the web and Ikea, but my search bore no fruit. No paydirt. I'm sure the cups have been discontinued. Perhaps the girl made the whole thing up, and thence the George Costanza mumble. If there are any Bay Area baristas reading this, please advise.
