Cut & Taste

Posts tagged with: coffee

Real men eat hearts for breakfast

Posted by chris on Dec 17th, 2009 5 comments

Cappuccino from Bellano Coffee in Santa Clara, CA

It’s difficult to maintain the illusion that I’m a dominant alphamale when I have such a girly-looking drink in front of me. Next time, I’m requesting a cup with skulls, dinosaurs, and big rockets. With a biscotti the shape of a medieval saber.

Previously on Cut & Taste

• Coffee Art
• I Heart Coffee

5 comments

review

Keep Portland Weird

Posted by chris on Oct 4th, 2009 1 comment

Lemon poppy cupcake with raspberry buttercream. Double-shot Americano. From Crema Bakery & Cafe in southeast Portland, Oregon.

The cafe

I love the layout of this cafe. Big, open, lots of windows and lots of hardwood.

The coffee

Their regular house coffee is from a french press. So it’s very strong. In fact, they provide hot water, right next to the coffee dispenser. Puny, weak mortals use this water to wuss-ify their drink. Can’t handle a french press? Get in the hot water line — with the other small-boned children.

The characters

A very intense guy started talking to me about how his ex-girlfriend was trying to kill him. That was the first thing he said to me.

After 2 minutes of him ironically ranting about crazy women, I tried to feign sudden hearing loss. I became engrossed in whatever was on my laptop screen and prayed for the girl sitting on the other side of me to bail me out. No luck. The guy topped off his one-sided conversation by inviting me to “team up” with him and fight strangers.

I had to decline, for I was in Portland on vacation and had to fly back home immediately. But after all this, for reasons beyond understanding, I moved to Portland... And no, it wasn’t to team up and fight strangers.

1 comment

review

Alarmingly good

Posted by chris on Jul 15th, 2009 3 comments

I never set an alarm clock. I work from home, on my own schedule and sleep very sporadically. I don’t plan things in advance so I rarely need to be somewhere at a specific time. But this morning, I broke my habit and set an iTunes alarm for 10:45AM…

All cause of Gregory’s Gourmet Desserts in Oakland, California. They’re open to the public one day a week: Wednesdays at 11:00AM (They close when they sell out.) Gregory’s is first & foremost a wholesale bakery, catering to hotels & restaurants. But due to public demand, they decided to open their doors to common streetwalkers — one day a week.

Ambiance

Their priority still lies with their corporate clients: They don’t have a “store-front” for the public. No fancy glass cases to show off their sweets like expensive jewelry. You basically walk down some stairs to a back room of the kitchen where they sell you cookies right off the baking trays.

No fancy printed menu behind the cash register (no cash register, either.) Instead, you walk by a human-sized dry-erase whiteboard just outside the door, filled from edge-to-edge with a huge list of cookies, cakes & cobblers. It’s not even pretty handwriting. It looks like I wrote it — And if you’ve ever had the misfortune of getting something handwritten from me, you know how shocking that is.

Fuck it. They don’t make menus, they make desserts. And you want ‘em.

My findings

• Key lime pie
• Peach cobbler
• 3 dark chocolate coffee cookies
• White chocolate blueberry oatmeal cookie. Tons of blueberry flavor. This is coming from a guy who’s still recovering from a cold.
• Peanut butter chocolate chip cookie
• Snickerdoodle

All for me.

3 comments

food link

Coffee Art

Posted by chris on Jun 24th, 2009 2 comments

Caffe Latte from Bellano Coffee in Santa Clara, CA

Jina Bolton just posted this photo I took on her new site, Art in my coffee! If you want to see how it’s done, watch this video of a barista in action. And just think of all the times their parents told them to stop playing with their food.

2 comments

“I just paid $26 for eggs.”

Posted by chris on Jun 22nd, 2009 add a comment

Had a nice, relaxing breakfast on the patio at Katy’s Place in Carmel-by-the-Sea, CA.

Eggs benedict: 3 poached eggs, smoked salmon, Hollandaise & caviar on top of an English muffin. Country potatoes. Fresh coffee.

Done.

• chris: I just paid $26 for eggs
• brian: Knowing you, it probably came with a side of fish from outer space. “Can you make sure the fish was orbiting a moon of Jupiter?”

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