hopkin

I must say the website for Nu, (if it is www.whatisnu.com) is extremely frustrating. Please restaurant websites: offer immediatly and simply your menu, hours, and an address. Then you can get into all your funky flash. and music ouch allow me to turn that off! a.

Second visit to Diner tonight, loved it. Lamb and Pork dishes were great, desserts were extraordinary. Not sure if it has been mentioned yet, but Heather lives in White Rock on a 5 acre farm where some of the ingredients for Diner are grown.

we use Bensdorp Cocoa (from Barry Callebaut) to make our chocolate syrup (for hot chocolate and caffe mocha). i believe the 'Cacao Barry' is the finest quality in the Callebaut product line. stop by and pick some up if you'd like to sample.

We have his individual Chocolate Almond Torte with sundried sour cherries.

Harry's Harvest at the Granville Island truck market (thursday's). He's had some beautiful little red crab apples the past few weeks.

the most important answer is your own.

i find it distressing that this company has trademarked the term "Small Batch Artisan Roasted". thats like a restaurant trademarking "pan fried to order"

also, never press down with too much force. to avoid the pressure, just back the press off a bit, wait for a few seconds, and then push down again.

the filtering of coffee requires pressure, be it that of gravity (drip with a courser grind) or some other nature such as the press pot or vacuum brewer, or to an extreme: espresso. letting the press or cup settle for about 20 seconds before drinking or pouring helps avoid the sludge. a good quality grind will not only solve much of your sludge problem (we call those 'fines' or dust) it will greatly improve the quality of your coffee as it will be more evenly extracted. i like to use the potato analogy. imagine if you cut up a bunch of potatoes, some in a fine dice, some in chunks, and some just in half. steam for 20 minutes, and enjoy.

oh my, "the rape of the cuisine". this is like when someone says white chocolate is my favorite chocolate, or do you like a good piece of meat well yes i eat KFC all the time... good coffee is naturally sweet, with a pleasant bitter character as in chocolate, perhaps an aroma of toasted nuts or vanilla and the flavour of coffee, not sugar or cream or anything else. treat good coffee like you would any other ingredient, don't bastardise it. coffee can taste as good as roasted coffee smells.

actually i believe it was because of ongoing hassle from the liquor authority.

Zizanie (7th and Fir) has closed.

Akbar's Own is open again after some heavy renovations on the building.

whats the status? are containers moving, is the strike over? (i don't read the papers, just egullet)

The Ordinary Cafe Dennis adapted the french term 'cafe ordinaire'. Translated I find it awkward since I find his food far from 'ordinary'. Had some great meals there.

besides a restaurant, i dream of a vancouver grocery store that only sold local products. seasonal produce, cheese, meats, jams, everything BC. there would have to be a non-local section for essentials like olive oil and such. could it work? anyone seen a store like that in their travels? a subtopic of this could be "which chef's have you seen shopping at the farmers markets?" I know Aurora does. I saw Allan from Aphrodite last week buying fruit for his pies.

Steeps Tea (Laurel & Broadway) It is special, and it is expensive. They should also guide you on how to prepare. not sure if they have bambo whisks, but they are pretty unique, if you're serious about matcha i think you should get one.

there's an article in today's vancouver sun about this. one of the owners of Take 5 Cafe is quoted explaining how they offered $2 lattes for a while when they first opened. he admits that it unrealistic to charge $2 for a latte unless you use lower-quality coffee.

Kraft Foods, the largest branded food and beverage company headquartered in the United States markets and distributes Starbucks whole bean and ground coffee in grocery, mass merchandiser and club stores. Kraft Foods is the food arm of the Altria group which also owns the Philip Morris tobacco group.

hopkin pulls out the fair trade file... fair trade is an excellent program. it is especially good for large companies who buy cheap low grade coffee, thereby forcing all market prices down. it is great that consumers demand roasters pay a good price for coffee, but thats not the end of the story. you cannot simply buy fair trade coffee and believe that everything is ok. everything is not ok. certified fair trade farmers receive a fixed rate of $1.26 per pound for the coffee they produce, regardless of quality. although $1.26 is higher than a lot of coffee traded on market, it is by no means fair. in fact fair trade of $1.26 is CHEAP, and considered by many roasters I know to be rock bottom. To roasters that are paying on average $1.50-2.00 for green, and even cup of excellence coffees for 5, 6, 8, even $20 a pound... fair trade becomes much less relevant. George Howell of Terroir Coffee says it much better than I can: "In my view Fair Trade is one solution in a world requiring many, each working in cooperation with the other and evolving as each learns from the other. Fair Trade is limited to small farmer cooperatives (did you know that you cannot be Fair Trade if your farm is too large!?). Medium and larger farmers, many of whom have the welfare of their workers fully at heart, cannot participate and thus find themselves at the mercy of a market paying well under the cost of production for several years in a row now. They are losing their farms. So are many small and tiny farmers – who can at best sell a minute share of their production as Fair Trade because their combined supply far exceeds demand for Fair Trade, no matter how aggressively it tries to grow." and from Counter Culture Coffee who have a strong sustainability program: "Special coffees require a tremendous amount of skilled attention to achieve greatness, and the men and women who produce these coffees deserve to be compensated well for their efforts. We are committed to paying fair prices for every coffee we source, and finding innovative ways to support and reward the production of really great coffees. We will never buy coffee for less than the cost of production, as is the practice with some other roasters. We love the coffee industry, and we are committed to supporting its stability by being responsible in our buying practices. Great coffee never comes cheaply, and we are committed to exercising and supporting fiscal sustainability throughout the chain of coffee." what I'm saying is 'consider' fair trade when you buy coffee, but consider a lot more things. fair trade is not the end of the line and it has nothing to do with quality. there are many other coffee's that have even stronger sustainability and support for farmers in a non-certified fair trade trademarked coffee. Lastly, I believe what is of greatest importance is that consumers of coffee spend a little more time to educate themselves about coffee issues and quality. the rewards are plenty.

it is true, but my point was not to pay more, it was not to pay less. $2 is not a sustainable price for cafe's, just like 50 cents a green pound is not a sustainable price for coffee farmers. if everyone agrees to pay $2 it will force good quality shops out of business and the rremaining to buy cheap coffee. it is a bad idea in an industry that is known for exploiting millions of hard working farmers.

no kidding, its true. latte translates to milk, it is a milk drink with coffee.

cheap coffee is nothing new, imperial nations have been peddling it for centuries at the mercy of poor farmers. there is a coffee crisis, didn't ya know? on the wide scale its about the green coffee trade (second largest commodity next to oil) and coffee-farming families struggle to survive. at the heart of the issue is too much cheap coffee on the market, which pushes the price of higher quality coffee down, and sinks hard working families into poverty. devaluing coffee doesn't help, it hurts. consumers need to seek quality coffee and refuse cheap coffee so that counties like vietnam and brasil who produce a glut of crap coffee for cheap realise its not worth it. they're growing it because we're buying it. this is the simplist way i can explain it. you may think it has nothing to do with you saving a buck on your latte, but i really think it does. i know nothing of the store mentioned, I'm just saying don't buy for price buy for quality. "life is too short for bad coffee".

Nadine's Butter of Pastures "Hand-Churned golden butter from Jersey cows grazing in Grand Forks BC." certified organic

latte is about milk. if you want a coffee drink order a cappuccino or macchiato. i made a mac for you last week so i know you know what i'm talking about.