Baltimore – Some communists and some coffee

Baltimore is quite similar to many other cities in the US.  It has a city core that has seen some successful development, where any yuppy can walk around feeling safe and content, there are some bastions of blue collar urbanity, and some areas where no one with other options would live (or even visit). The last aspect of the city was featured in the HBO crime drama

Even benches speak the truth in Baltimore.

The Wire (which is pretty amazing). But I won’t talk about the last group of places, because I typically try to stay away from them (and anyway, they usually have disappointing espresso offerings). However, on a recent trip to Baltimore, Taryn and I checked out a few parts of Baltimore, and I learned a few things about the place. The most important being, that communists make pretty bad coffee (but I’ll get to that part soon).

In DC most of the large “classic” markets are dominated by yuppies and other upper-middle/upper class types. This is not the case in Baltimore. So if you are in Baltimore, go to Lexington Market (Open since 1782! – as their sign proclaims) to see what a non-yuppified market looks like. It is especially worth going to Faidleys fish market inside of Lexington. Their crab cakes are quite good, and if you order a fish sandwich they give you an entire fish on two pieces Wonder bread – good stuff.

But that all sounded like a plug for a tourist trap. We first checked out a communist coffee

Red Emma's

shop located in the Mt. Vernon area. Red Emma’s features all of your favorite leftist books and pamphlets, including a rather impressive section of books extolling the virtues of Fidel Castro, Mao, Lenin and other communist revolutionaries. Strangely, Stalin was less well

represented; given that he was at least as good at executing capitalists and other enemies of the state as Mao, I think he deserved some more attention. Maybe I should send them a note. Anyway, I suppose history can be rather cruel to perfectly effective leaders. Oh well.

Although Red Emma’s certainly has an interesting book selection (and I’m being honest here), this socialist experiment fails in the way that matters…their coffee isn’t good at all. Being a socialist (or so I’m told), this fact frightens me a bit. I guess I had always assumed that the alienation of a barista from what she produced was behind the terrible coffee at capitalist coffee shops like Starbucks, and that the elimination of this alienation would bring about a superior drink. My experience at Red Emma’s seems to disconfirm this. Perhaps Red Emma’s needs a bit of the fascism that other socialist states have used for “quality control” purposes. Who knows; well at least they are nice enough to have several computers that just about anyone case use, whether customer or not. So, as with any socialist state, it is probably best if you don’t contribute anything but use the goods the state provides.

We then hopped on the trolly to check out the Hampden neighborhood, which is adjacent to John’s Hopkins University. The neighborhood is well known for people saying “hon” to each other (as well as the certain type of people who are called “hons” – they have really tall blue hair apparently), and they even have a Honfest every June. But hipsters have also invaded. As you walk from the trolly stop, you will walk past modest homes with (at this time of year)

So you know where the money is at.

awesome Christmas decorations out front. It has a definite blue-collar feel that is terribly lacking in many cities. But as you walk east, you eventually reach a decidedly hipper part of town. The stores sell expensive home-goods and clothing, and cafes sell $3 coffee. However, we had heard about a coffee shop here that many think serves the best coffee in Baltimore, and we eventually stumbled upon the little pretentious coffee house that we were seeking.

Spro coffee boasts the most impressive selection of coffee types and brew methods that I have ever seen. You can have your cup made by Aeropress, Chemex, Clever, Eva solo, french press, pour over, Vac Pot, or espresso. However, it is quite expensive; a cup of one o f the more exotic roasts can range anywhere from $3-$7. We passed on the fancy brews this time; I ordered a cappuccino and Taryn ordered a spiced chai latte. The place is tiny, but we luckily were able to get a table.

The cappuccino at Spro

Our drinks took a while, and the baristas seemed rather disorganized, without an efficient system for making drinks. I found this rather odd, given that people seemed to be mostly ordering espresso and pour over, and there were three people working behind the counter. My cappuccino came eventually and looked beautiful, but Taryn was given a normal latte instead of a chai latte. Although the latte was good, for a latte, she told them about the mix-up and they seemed quite confused.

Eventually Taryn’s chai latte came out, and it was quite good, with an interesting spice combination. The cappuccino had excellent art, and the foam consistency was very good. This foam added a good body and sweetness to the drink that any good foam should. However, the espresso itself seemed a bit flat, without any interesting characteristics of its own. It simply had some basic chocolate elements, but even those were not very vibrant. So the cappuccino was ok, but I expected more from a place as pretentious as Spro. However, because I didn’t try a non-espresso drink (which seems to be their specialty), I’ll not pass judgment for now. I’ll certainly be back next time I’m in Baltimore. And I will be back; this is a cool town.

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A tour of DC cappuccinos

A couple of years ago I started a project to try a cappuccino at every legitimate coffee house in Madison, WI.  I ended (only missing a few places) that project a few days before moving to the Washington, DC area; now I would like to try a similar thing here in DC.  I learned a lot from my first project in Madison and I hope to share some of my experiences with DC coffee houses.  I’ve already explored a great deal of DC’s coffee scene but up until now I have not done so in a systematic way; this is what I will do on this blog in the coming months.

I like cappuccinos; that is primarily the reason why I will review those rather than other espresso drinks (or even drip coffee).  However, there are other reasons why cappuccinos are a good test of the quality of a cafe.  Most espresso drinks consist primarily of prepared espresso and milk in various forms and quantities.  The best way to test a cafe’s espresso is to drink it straight; however, this will give you no indication of how well that cafe prepares milk.  Alternatively, trying a latte will give you a good indication of how well the cafe steams milk, but the high milk to espresso ratio makes it very difficult to make an assessment of the underlying espresso.  A cappuccino is 1/3 espresso, 1/3 steamed milk, and 1/3 foam; this composition allows the nuanced features of the espresso to come through, while retaining the silkiness and sweetness of the milk (that most people prefer).

One problem with enjoying cappuccinos is that excellent ones are a relative rarity.  Everything must come together: the cafe must use fresh, high quality beans, the barista must use the proper amount and perfect fineness of grind and must tamp the espresso with a certain amount of pressure (and only use one application of pressure), the machine must be at a certain precise temperature to produce a good extraction, the barista must use the proper amount of milk and be able to use the steam wand to produce a good amount of microfoam.  A problem (or many of them) can arise at any point in this process, producing a cappuccino ranging from good to terrible.  Large chains, such as Starbucks, have been able to produce espresso drinks of decent quality consistently by using “full-auto” espresso machines; these machines grind and tamp coffee by themselves, producing espresso at the push of a button.  This means that the barista need only froth milk effectively, largely avoiding the possibility of truly terrible espresso drinks.  However, this automation never seems to produce truly exceptional espresso.  Fortunately, most cafes still use “semi-auto” espresso machines, which require a barista of great skill…and keeps things interesting.

The bottom line: there are a lot of terrible cappuccinos out there and hopefully I can help you avoid them.  There are also certainly some amazing ones, that I hope to find (and keep all to myself!).  Just as I did in Madison, I will be using several criteria in my assessments of cappuccinos.  Most importantly, understand that my score is of the drink itself and not other qualities of the cafe (price, food, ambiance, other happiness producing properties…); I will comment on other features of a cafe but these will not be included in my scores.  The criteria are as follows, only slightly modified (and hopefully improved…) from the reviews I did in Madison (all rated on a 5 point scale):

Smoothness: Bitter cups will get a low score.

Presentation: Cappuccinos should be in a 5 -6 oz cup; milk art is always a plus.

Strength: A sufficiently robust drink will get a high score, a milky one will earn a low score.

Complexity: If the cup seems to have hints of several flavors, it will score highly.

Foam: A cappuccino should have a layer of finely frothed milk (microfoam).

The following map shows the cafes that I will visit; once I visit a cafe I will change its icon into a cup and a link to the review will be included in the title.  The latest reviews can always be found at this blog, under the “DC Cappuccino Reviews” category.   DC has far more cafes than Madison does, so I must be rather selective about the places I chose to visit (or I’ll never finish!).  Essentially, if I have found any indication on the internet (mainly yelp and google searches) or by word of mouth that a cafe has good cappuccinos, I have included it on my list.  I have also left off the large chains, as these are typically very similar to one another and thus not very interesting (see my review of the cappuccino at a Madison Starbucks). This is only a preliminary list and I will add cafes to it as I get new leads.

Finally, I will also take some time in each post to talk about the neighborhoods in which the cafes are located.  So, if you are a tourist wanting to know more about DC and you have a hankering for espresso, my reviews should be a good starting point.

Ok, now that all of that is out of the way, first stop….North Side Social in Arlington!  I hope it’s good!

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Silver Spring – a pedestrian’s nightmare

Last week I visited the Washington DC area for the first time.  I might have some more comments about my experience in the future but I want to start out with some comments about Silver Spring, MD.  I will be living near downtown Silver Spring, so I wanted to get a feel for the area.  In recent years, Silver Spring has undergone an urban revival of sorts.  Before this time, the area was a typical (somewhat rundown) suburb of DC but a large amount of residential and commercial development along with its access to the DC subway system has made it a very walkable area on paper.  There are a number of grocery stores, shops, cafes, restaurants (though most of these are of a chain variety), so that one doesn’t really need a car in order to live in this area.  Again, on paper, this seems like a very happy place for a pedestrian.

However, when one gets down into the streets it becomes obvious that this city is still controlled by the car.  Several wide and busy streets (highways really) bisect the downtown area bringing with them a ton of through traffic.  At cross walks, this means that a pedestrian must wait for an extremely long time to cross most streets; preference is obviously given to traffic flow along these corridors.  There also seems to be very little thought (or enforcement) of coherent and contiguous sidewalks.  You will be walking along a sidewalk (The east side of Eastern Ave. in front of the Blair’s apartment complex comes to mind) and the sidewalk will simply end for no reason.  I can’t for the life of me understand why this is acceptable.  This trend gets even worse in other locations; there were many instances where a sidewalk only exists on one side of the street and the ‘sidewalked’ side will change as the street progresses.  This means that one has to continually cross a typically busy road simply to walk down the street.  In another instance a sidewalk would degenerate into a curbless extension of a small parking lot, so that there was nothing between pedestrians (squeezing next to parked cars) and traffic than a small line on the pavement.  That sucks.

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Update about my real life

The last few months have been quite hectic, so I haven’t really updated this much.  There are a few coffee shop reviews that I have yet to write up, but those should be coming soon.  Also, I’m moving to the Washington D.C area by the end of summer where I’ll be starting in the philosophy PhD program at the University of Maryland.  So, the entire admissions process is over for me and I’m quite happy with how it turned out in the end.  However, the waiting process was probably the most stressful period in my life and I’m very glad for it to be over with!  I’ll probably post more about my experiences later; I did learn a few things as I went through this admissions cycle and perhaps it may be of some (limited) help to others.  And maybe I’ll have some thoughts about philosophy eventually…who knows.

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