In “To Burundi and Beyond for Coffee’s Holy Grail,” (The New York Times, September 12, 2007, Dining Out, pp. D1 and D8) Peter Meehan writes about “coffee hunters” who “will go almost anywhere, do almost anything and pay almost any price in pursuit of the perfect cup of coffee.” This handful of globe trekkers—Meehan talked with four of them—mostly work for small coffee roasters that “buy their beans directly from the farms and cooperatives that grow them, not brokers.” According to Connie Blumhardt, publisher of Roast, in some circles, coffee hunters are worshipped as “megagods.”
Vivid, out-of-the mainstream flavor is the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow for these coffee hunters. George Howell, who heads George Howell Coffee Company in Acton, Massachusetts, told The Times, “We’re finding flavors we’ve never ever tasted before, different fruit and floral flavors from really pristine, clean coffees. These are flavors that have been lost or diluted in the old methods of blending coffee down to an average product.”
Among the coffee roasters mentioned in the article is Counter Culture Coffee in Durham, N.C. which supplies many restaurants and gourmet shops in our area, as well as Café Grumpy and Ninth Street Espresso in New York, described by The Times as two of the city’s “most highly regarded cafes.” Counter Culture’s co-owner and coffee hunter, Peter Giuliano, often speaks at 3 Cups in Chapel Hill; his comments are a regular feature in the shop’s weekly newsletter.
But Will They Drink Pumpkin Spice Lattes?
Starbucks currently has over 14,000 outlets in 43 countries. That’s a lot of skinny lattes and mocha chip frappucinos.
Last week the world’s biggest coffee company got a little bigger. In “After Long Dispute, a Russian Starbucks,” Andrew E. Kramer reported that Starbucks opened its first coffee shop in a mall in Khimki, a small city outside Moscow. (The New York Times, September 7, 2007, Business, p. C3) The opening was a triumph for Starbucks, which had refused to pay a “trademark squatter” to “yield the Starbucks name in Russia.” The company eventually won in court.
But it will cost Russians plenty to enjoy a venti mocha: New Yorkers pay $4.71 for the drink; Russians will have to fork over a stunning 230 rubles, or $8.96. Prices, notes Kramer, “are a reflection of the oil-driven economic boom here.” Russian stores will offer the same coffee drinks as Starbucks everywhere, but sandwiches—mushroom and cheese—will be adapted to “local tastes.”
One thing Starbucks will not offer, I imagine, is Russian atmosphere. In June B and I rose early every morning for the fabulous strong coffee served in the bar of St. Petersburg's Hotel Astoria. Around 6:40 our first morning, we observed an Ivana Trump lookalike and a flashily dressed rube drain a bottle of wine and lurch to their feet. She began to lean dangerously backwards and when her friend reached out to steady her, she punched him in the face. They then tottered companionably to the elevator. Our waiter chuckled and said, “Open till the last customer leaves.”
Out of—or Into Africa?
Paying for a café con leche in a Boston Starbucks on Labor Day, I spied Marcus Samuelsson’s wonderful cookbook, Soul of a New Cuisine: A Discovery of the Foods and Flavors of Africa, at the cash register. But was it? The book was awfully slim, and a cover photo of plantain strips had been replaced by one of coffee beans.
Samuelsson, the Ethiopian-born, Swedish-raised chef and co-owner of Aquavit in New York, has teamed up with Starbucks to create new coffee blends—Ubora and Joya del Dia-- and pastries. (See “He Probably Makes a Mean Skim Latte” in The New York Times, September 2, 2007, Business, p. 2). To promote the partnership—the theme is “Coffee is Culinary”--Samuelsson has just finished a 10-city tour “signing cookbooks, offering samples of his chocolate cinnamon bread and probably posing for lots of photographs.” The cookbook, which includes recipes from 5 Starbucks baristas, is a seriously abridged version of the original; the company will donate $1 for every cookbook sold before October 1 to UNICEF.
Although Starbucks has stores in 42 countries outside the U.S., according to the most recent information on its website only one country—Egypt—is on the African continent. As for Samuelsson, he’s about to open a new African-inspired restaurant—Merkato 55—in New York. Could Africa be the next target for the giant coffee company’s ambitious expansion plans? According to The Times, it aims to increase its overseas presence to 20,000 stores.