Intelligentsia at Target — In Related News, Pigs Fly



It may not be the biggest surprise ever at Target, but it’s close. You can now buy Intelligentsia coffee at Target. It’s in the aisle next to the Folger’s and Yuban and Starbucks.

Lord Windsor Roasters in Long Beach

Long Beach has a surprisingly good coffee scene, with Lord Windsor Roasters and Rose Park Roasters leading the charge. It’s worth checking them out if you’re in the neighborhood.

Lodge Bread — Great Bread, Meh Everything Else

They say that in France a bakery can be great at bread or great at pastries, but not both.  Lodge Bread in Culver City stands as a testament to that principle.

Let’s get this out of the way: Lodge Bread makes a great loaf of bread. A real rival to Clark Street Bread for the title of best loaf in the city (and by that, I mean, best Tartine imitator in LA). I just wish I had gotten my bread and gotten out of there.

Bar 9 Collective — A New Roaster in Culver City

Culver City, considering its reputation as a food destination, has been relatively weak in good coffee. Cognoscenti is awesome. Akasha and Rockenwagner serve Stumptown. Scoops Westside pours Intelligentsia. But the only real roaster in town has been the Coffee Conservatory, an older place near Sony.

Bar 9 opened a couple years ago to make sure that hipsters who got lost and wandered into the Westside would have somewhere to get coffee.

Demitasse Pastry Update — Sugarbloom

It has been a very long time since I’ve done a Demitasse pastry update. I thought I’d take the opportunity to highlight the fact that they carry Sugarbloom pastries now, which are pretty great, and reflect back on Demitasse briefly.

Pitchoun — a French Bakery by Pershing Square

Pershing Square is an odd place.  Framed by the Jewelry District and the Biltmore Hotel, it is an inhospitable island of urban blight. (Read up for more info: KCET history of Pershing Square; Thoughts on redevelopment.)  But a couple new food places are popping up, including the very ambitious Pitchoun! Bakery.  Opened by actual French bakers with an apparently unlimited budget, does Pitchoun! live up to its aspirations to become a destination in the nascent Downtown dining scene?

Blue Bottle Coffee in Venice

Blue Bottle Coffee is hitting LA, starting in the coffeedouche-friendly confines of Abbot Kinney and the DTLA Arts District. While Blue Bottle’s arrival is welcome, it means the death of LA’s Handsome Coffee — true coffeedouches, but they made a fine cup of joe. I visited the newly opened outlet at the north end of Abbot Kinney. Expect tiny, with no place to sit, and of course, no WiFi.

U-Space — Ukeleles and Coffee! Yet another reason to never go to Starbucks

Ukeleles and good coffee? You may never have put the two together, but this below-the-radar spot in Little Tokyo will make you realize the genius of the combination.

Starbucks Reserve Coffees and the Clover Brewing Machine

Starbucks is quietly upping its coffee game, introducing a Reserve line of single-origin coffees and changing how it’s made and served. Starbucks has for years tried out concept restaurants to see how far they could push the high end of the brand. In the late 1990s in San Francisco’s Mission District, Starbucks secretly launched a plush cafe called Circadia, to see what all that hipster fuss was all about. It didn’t really go anywhere. Recently, they paid an obscene amount of money for a middling pastry brand and rolled out a full service restaurant with alcohol under the La Boulange name. And now they have rolled out a Reserve cafe, trying to throw money at the Blue Bottle/Stumptown problem.

In addition to criticism that it is America’s largest milkshake purveyor, these third wave coffee roasters stand as a rebuke to Starbucks and what America used to think of as premium coffee. Now, total Coffeedouches turn their noses up at the thought of paying $5 for a mediocre latte at Starbucks, and instead are giving that $5 for a hand-dripped/siphon brewed/etc. cup at small (and not so small) third wave roasters that emphasize lighter roasts and the actual flavor of coffee.

Into this problem Starbucks has quietly expanded its Reserve line of coffees and started rolling out its Clover brewer. Just a few months ago, there were only a handful of Starbucks in the LA area that had this machine, but now they are all over. Not quite everywhere, but enough that it’s not hard to find if you look.

The Clover brewer made some waves a few years back for 1) costing north of $10,000, 2) offering Internet-connected precision and repeatability, and then 3) being bought out by Starbucks. The story went that Howard Schultz was so impressed when he tried coffee made on the Clover that he pulled a Victor Kiam and bought the company.

So could Skynet playing for Team Green save Starbucks?

Stumptown Coffee in DTLA – Third Wave Coffee Slouching Towards Bethlehem

In light of the recent news that Blue Bottle is going to open up at least four sites in LA, let’s celebrate the third wave coffee titan that has already started to take over LA, Portland’s Stumptown Coffee. The Arts District roastery and shop is situated near Bestia and Bread Lounge, forming an emerging power center in LA’s culinary landscape.