It’s that time of the year when baristas work on their game and bring their best. I have participated in the Barista Movement on many levels and believe that it is a key piece of the future of Specialty Coffee and necessary to professionalizing the industry.

I’m off to Los Angeles (again) on Friday morning where Intelligentsia will be hosting the Western Regional Barista Competition. (Check out all the details at www.wrbc2009.net.) Since this year’s World Barista Competition is taking place at the Specialty Coffee Association of America’s Conference in Atlanta, it sure would be great if the US champ wins on our home turf. Until then, see you at the Battle of Los Angeles.

My wife Emily‘s birthday was a couple of weeks ago, and we had perhaps one of the best meals of our lives at North Pond Restaurant, located on the North Pond in Lincoln Park. The funny thing is that it was a last minute reservation that landed us there.

The impetus for going to North Pond was that we had made a reservation elsewhere for a nice dinner, but not at a place that would have been acceptable for Scarlet, our almost seven year-old, to join us. This made Scarlet so very sad, so we changed plans and made a 5:30 pm reservation that could include her.

Following an early winter snowstorm, we headed to the restaurant. To get there, you leave your car on the western edge of the park, and, in this case, walk across a path cleared in the snow passing through a tunnel constructed of rock and then on through the park until you arrive at the restaurant’s front door. From there you have a view across the pond, the entire park, and in the distance, the cold twinkling skyline of Chicago. Covered with snow, on a crisp, perfect winter night, it was stunning and poetically memorable.

Once inside, Bruce Sherman (North Pond’s chef, who I have gotten to know over the years through involvement in Chicago’s Green City Market) visited us at our table in the very cozy confines of North Pond’s Arts & Craft style building. I have always liked Bruce as he is very amiable, charmingly cynical and really quite funny. I have experienced his humor in varying degrees, perhaps none greater than an evening spent with him and a few others emptying many bottles of red wine at Delfina in San Francisco after the Slow Food Nation Event.

Scarlet was absolutely amazed that we knew the chef (and quite a bit delighted that we did). Bruce gave us his recommendations and agreed to make something special for Scarlet who was concerned about two things: First she thought that there would be no other kids at this restaurant, which was indeed true, and second that she wouldn’t find anything that she’d like to eat, which of course was completely not the case.

North Pond epitomizes the farm-to-table restaurant, with Bruce knowing the farms and farmers he works with very well. No molecular gastronomy here. Marvelous, carefully selected ingredients thoughtfully seasoned and prepared with great care. I must say, everything was amazing, from appetizers, to entrees, to the wine, to the desert. Scarlet had quail, or a “mini- chicken” as Bruce put it, and perhaps one of the best things any of us has ever tasted: an incredible bacon wrapped potato. Not that bacon and potatoes are hard to find, but these were simply the best bacon and potato ever to meet in one place on one plate. Scarlet loved it and has been talking about how good it was ever since. There were other nice touches including a special birthday menu for Emily and an “almost birthday” menu for Scarlet. Although there were many others eating at the restaurant, it really felt as if dinner was prepared just for us that evening, as I am sure other diners felt as well.

Bruce’s cooking continues to amaze and inspire me. Each time we visit the food gets better, although with each visit it seems like it couldn’t possibly get any better. And Bruce is nothing but humble about it. His desire seems to be continuous improvement.

Not only that, but the service is very much a reflection of him in that it is not grandstanding, condescending, or intimidating. The message is great local food, presented with integrity and generosity of spirit. How nice. No punk rock attitude, just stunning food and kind, elegant hospitality with a desire for continuous improvement. Let me say it again, how nice.

Perhaps all of us that have coffeebars can take a cue from this?

If you have begun to go down this path, it is surely a step in the right direction. If not, it sure seems like a good time to get started.

Keep up the great work, Bruce.

“I love you to the moon and back and back again.” That is what my daughter Scarlet and I would say to each other when we read her the bedtime story “Guess How Much I Love You.”

I am flying back to Chicago after a long coffee trip to Brazil. I am weary, but happy. Each day I was in Brazil I was either cupping on the international jury for the 2008 Cup of Excellence or visiting coffee farms (and cupping) all over the states of Minas Gerias and Sao Paulo. In ten days I visited 12 farms, some more thoroughly than others.

Each day was full of coffee and I got to see many friends from all over the world. I was glad to see them. I met with the growers that provide us some of the best coffees in Brazil and the world. I was so glad to see them too. There were many meals together; lodging of varied quality, and long car rides in crowded quarters. I also had a ride in a helicopter that took three of us over a beautiful coffee growing area, a heavily forested ridge, and then floating, dreamlike into the vast hazed skyline of Sao Paulo. It was so beautiful; I cannot possibly capture it in written word. It goes without saying that I got to know some people better.

Almost every night, on a far from perfect internet connection, I would call Emily and Scarlet on Skype so we could talk and at least get a look at each other. In this way they got a tour of my hotel room or the hotel lobby (very cool in Pocos de Caldas), and I could catch up and see what was new at home. I really missed them. Inevitably Scarlet would say or do something sweet and charming and that would make me miss them even more.

I am glad to be going home. As my plane clips the southern end of the Amazon, I consider myself lucky to not be a victim of what can be the all-consuming allure of coffee, which leads many to more than a little personal wreckage.

So, for the never-ending marvel that continues to be a life in coffee and the friends I have met and made in far flung places, I love you to the moon. For Emily and Scarlet and all of the support you have provided in smooth and turbulent times, I love you to the moon and back and back again… at least.

I want to clarify something. Apparently my last post sounded a little dark, which was not my intention. When I said the human spirit could be “stunning and complicated,” I meant stunning in that it can so often surprise you with kindness in unexpected places. I meant complicated in that we bring so much of our experience of the past and hope for the future to each new interaction.

Tonight at 2 AM we invite a little more darkness into our lives as daylight savings comes to an end. To me the end of daylight savings signals the inevitable coming of winter and cold coziness for the Northern Hemisphere.

Although it may seem, well, dark, this darkness can have much about it that is positive. (I want to clarify this does not include dark roasted coffee for those smarties who might be dying to fire off a comment.) It signals the upcoming holiday season where we get that chance to see some old pals and family, break out our cold weather gear, and enjoy the chaos/pleasantness that is found at this time. While wearing some sort of fuzzy fleece and socks, we will wake up early with a house full of family, rubbing our eyes over that first cup of life-saving coffee. Man, what a great time of year. As they say, it is always darkest before the dawn.

1:00 AM in Los Angeles, the city of forgetting. Dinner and drinks somewhere on the Westside (way above the fray) with some friends (Evan & Lily). Beautiful lights and views. Sleep has never been a specialty of mine. But, maybe vivid dreams are.
So what have we? Los Angeles. Truculent. Marvelous. Reckless. Magnificent. The best and worst of what the future has to offer. A reflection of the human spirit—vacant, vain, but stunning, complicated. Bring folks here from somewhere else and they are speechless, breathless, puzzled, curious, leering, judgmental, awed, confused, inspired, numbed, and breathless. I take a sip of Flor de Cana and think, “What a place.” The void, anti-matter, or is it matter?
See you tomorrow in Silver Lake.

“Easy-peasy-lemon-squeezy,” said Scarlet. That was my little girl’s response when I asked her about the difficulty of her 1st grade math class. Man, I wish I could say that was the case for anything in the adult world. It all seems to take longer, cost more, extract more mental energy, and cause more stress. At times it is hard not to be cynical. On the other hand, if you want an opportunity to absolutely laugh your ass off, I highly recommend playing the old classic “20 questions” with a six-year-old. It should be renamed “20 guesses” as logical questioning is abandoned one or two questions in. It goes something like this:

“Is it an animal?”
“No.”
“Is it a mouse?”
“No.”
“Is it bigger than you?”
“Yes”
“Is it a dinosaur?”
“What? I said it wasn’t an animal.”
“Is it a dead mouse?”
“That’s still an animal.” (Trying very hard not to laugh).
“Is it a crumb?”
“A crumb? No. Don’t you want to ask questions that might help you to get to an answer?”
“OK Daddy, is it the Serious Tower?”
(Since she meant to say Sears Tower, I am now laughing hysterically as are Scarlet and my wife, Emily.) “No.”
“Can I have a clue?”

Back to “Easy-peasy-lemon-squeezy.” If you want a couple of coffees that are both easy to drink, yet all out stunners from different ends of the flavor spectrum, check out our current Yirgy from the Kurimi Project and our Matalapa Micro-Lot from the Los Inmortales Project. If only everything were that easy.

It’s been awhile and I’ve decided that I will commit to posting at least once a week, even if it is brief.

A lot has happened since my last post: Slow Food Nation in San Francisco (a smashing success), the opening of our New York Training space in SoHo, Black Cat Espresso going 100% Direct Trade, our Venice store beginning construction, a successful Great Lakes Barista Jam, Intelligentsia’s 13th anniversary, and many other good things. Although challenging and sometimes tiring due to quite a few cross country flights, things seem to be coalescing in a way that I hadn’t necessarily expected.

I guess the sad news is that the Cubbies got crushed in three games and the economy appears to be scary, to say the least. So for the three of you (thanks Mom, Dad and other) that read my blog, look forward to more frequent posts. I gotta ask: Should I go picture free (as in a great book) or add pictures (so as to be part of the “look at me I’ve taken a picture of everything” generation)? I eagerly await you responses.

Over and in/out.

It’s night, and I am sitting on the front porch of my house in Chicago as summer breathes a few final breaths, with crickets chirping and the air still sweet and sultry, yet winking at autumn.

This summer was not exactly what I had hoped for. As has been said many times before, time passes too quickly. My only daughter Scarlet is 6 (precious 6) and off to first grade next week. If there were ever an age at which time should be stopped for children, it is 6 as, at least for little girls, it would be hard to imagine anything more perfect. If you ever met her, you’d know what I mean. To think that she is 1/3 of the way from leaving home takes my breath away.

To anyone on the brink of parenthood (and there seem to be a lot of you out there these days), do not let the early days of your kid’s life slip away as you cannot get them back. Being involved with your kid(s) while building your business or career effectively is a feat that could knock topple even the most adept of the Flying Wallendas. Please heed my advice. You might accidentally land on happiness.

So what of summer? Well, our Silver Lake coffeebar just turned one. Another coffebar in a city of forgetting is on its way. If it reaches 80% of our aspirations, I swear nothing will ever be the same. (Have you ever noticed how courageous I am after a few glasses of wine?) For any of you floating through the city of Los Angeles, it becomes more interesting by the minute for reasons that cannot be explained unless you see it with your own eyes. So please, check it out. Something IS going on.

And yes, I am also pleased that we opened a training lab in New York. Stay tuned.

On Thursday, I am off to Slow Food Nation in San Francisco for the weekend. It’ll be nice to catch up with a number of friends from coffee as well as an old friend and his new wife… who have nothing to do with it. See you around.

“I wish I was as fortunate, as fortunate as me.”
-Eddie Vedder

Another 6:00 a.m. flight from Chicago to Los Angeles. Making this flight usually entails waking up around 4:00 a.m. and fumbling quietly in the darkness so as to not wake Emily or Scarlet (who have on occasion described me as “noisy”). I am fairly adept at this drill as I probably take this flight every couple of weeks. It appears that I will be making it much more often for reasons that will become clear in the not-too-distant future. My wardrobe for this adventure is almost always the same: jeans, slip-on Vans (great for making it through security), a t-shirt (short or long sleeve depending on the season) and a jacket (when seasonally appropriate). This, one could argue, is where my luck begins. You will notice I am not putting on a tuxedo (although recent commentary on our removal of the 20 oz. drink from our menus in Chicago labeled me “elitist”, which implies a monocle, top hat and perhaps an FDR-like cigarette holder) or a suit or even the uniform of so-called “relaxed” employers (khakis and a golf shirt… oh my!).

That’s right ladies and gents, the clownish, fighting – middle – age – with – every – breath, incongruously – t-shirt – and – sneakers – wearing – while – reading – the – Times – business – section guy next to you is me. Thank god. I will admit that at some distant point in history, I had hoped to be one of those guys wearing a suit on his way to some important meeting. But thankfully, I flubbed the LSAT and realized that I was not going to be a lawyer (at least not the kind I wanted to be). In hindsight, I am glad it went down that way as I now view lawyers as a necessary evil (my apologies to the lawyers that we currently employ) as they tangle with the insurance folks and the ever-daring bankers (excepting our current banker who I really happen to think is great) for a spot in one of the lower circles of Hell.

After flubbing the test, I had one real job in sales for a large company. I did well but did not enjoy it very much and lasted ten months. After this experience, I launched head-long into entrepreneurialism by starting a bottled iced tea company with a friend (which tanked after four years), worked for a couple of coffee roasters in their retail stores (Peet’s and the now-defunct-in-the-U.S. Spinelli) and then, after coming to my senses, or maybe forgetting about them, I moved from San Francisco to Chicago to launch Intelligentsia with my wife. Much to my amazement and after so many close calls, we are still around and are finally getting things shored up in a way I really hadn’t thought would be possible. Upon leaving California, I felt a little beaten, and I think Em did too, like we had let ourselves down, but we swore that someday we’d be back in some form. With a thriving coffeebar in Silver Lake, a Los Angeles Roasting Works and another coffeebar there on its way, I guess we’re back in the state.

So why “lucky”? Well, it goes like this: I am lucky to still be married to Emily (undoubtedly the most clever and most beautiful woman in the room) after all of the strains we’ve encountered; lucky to have parents (believe it or not their names are Don and Daisy) that never doubted this was possible (even after losing their investment in my first business misadventure); lucky to have Scarlet (my now six-year-old daughter who reminds me that every day should be an adventure attacked with gusto); lucky to have found coffee; lucky to work everyday with some of the smartest (certainly smarter than me), most creative, nicest, hardest working folks you’ll ever meet; lucky to have dodged so many bullets in this business; lucky to have found people that believe in what we do; and lucky to not have to put on a suit to go to go to work every day in some faceless place that gets to make no relevant difference each day. I guess that all-in-all it’s not too bad, 6:00 a.m. flights not withstanding.

On a flight from Chicago to Los Angeles…

Tick, tock. Another Specialty Coffee Association of America (SCAA) show has passed. Like other years, this one was a blur, but a blur off a different kind. The show is always a time to see all those you know from the far-flung places that make up Specialty Coffee. My first SCAA show was in Minneapolis, some 12 years ago. It is odd to go from wide-eyed observer to (perhaps overly) seasoned observer in this span of time. It is refreshing to see the Barista culture and youth (including an always positively restless George Howell, demonstrating that youth is not a reflection of chronological age, but spirit) driving change. I remember being awed by the big names in the industry and wondering how we as a start up would find our way. Lately, it seems we are beginning to.

For the first time I feel like we really executed on what promise we have as a coffee company. There was a knowing, positive fruition of our efforts from the way our coffee and espresso (Black Cat and the Single Origins) tasted at our booth to the way we presented our new Black Cat Project and Intelligentsia In Season initiatives to how we fared at the United States Barista Championship. The only other person that has seen this process from then until now is my trusty compadre Geoff Watts (and my wife Emily who founded the company with me but as of late has moved onto an endeavor much more charming than our business and her name is Scarlet). Clarity of purpose is nice and like any other business owner can tell you, we have made our fair share of mistakes. Some of them twice.

Geoff (Intelligentsia’s Coffee Buyer) and I had some nice talks during the show, which we rarely have given the rigor of his travel schedule outside of the country and my time between the different pieces of what we do in the United States. I happen to like Geoff. In our work together I am confident we have both found times that we have been thrilled to be working together and others when we have been incredibly frustrated with each other. Lately it has been the former. In both of our cases we have been figuring it out as we go along, and I finally think we are getting to the point of being the professionals we had always hoped to be.

I remember our first trip to origin together, and I must say where he has taken things with our work at source is far beyond what I (and I think he) imagined possible. That said, I think we both know we are just getting started.

And to everybody that helped to get us to where we are now, I am deeply grateful. I have watched a lot of you grow up (some quite quickly in the past couple of years) and it has been immensely gratifying watching your efforts shape an industry. It hasn’t been easy. But man, it sure has been fun.

I hope I can stay I can be as invigorated about it as George Howell is now for 20 more years. That could be nice.