daves

One more thing I wanted to mention: the roaster suggested separating the phases as I wrote above when you're starting out since it'll be easier to figure out what's happening wrong. Once you master the techniques, then you can start combining the stretching and texturing into a single phase (incorporate air while whirlpooling). Some videos from youtube showing the basics:

Steaming milk is an adventure onto itself. It was a mystery to me how to get the velvety milk-based drinks that you can get from the better cafes (and I’m not talking *$). Then I did what I should have done first: find a great mentor and show up with a gallon of milk My mentor was a local micro-roaster. Here’s what I learned that day. Properly prepared steamed milk is a micro-foam: perfectly distributed invisible bubbles throughout the entire volume of the milk. With apologies to *$, there isn’t a cap of foam on top of hot milk. When you look into the pitcher, it is thick, shiny, and viscous like white latex paint. And it really becomes second nature once you learn and practice the techniques. It’ll take far longer to read this than it takes to do it. I’ll start steaming at the same time I start pulling a double shot, and I’m ready to pour the milk before the shot completes (total milk steaming is about 20s). Now I have a steam monster, and other machines would probably take longer. Steaming milk is 2 distinct phases: stretching and texturing. The first stage is stretching, and this is increasing the volume of the milk by adding air. After purging the steam wand of any condensed water, I put the wand deep under the surface and turn on the steam valve. I immediately bring the tip to just under the surface and raise it to keep it just under the surface. You should hear something like Shh-Shh-Shh ripping sound. Once the volume increases by about 15-20%, then it is time to texture. This is how the surface foam that you’ve just created gets incorporated throughout the volume. The exact process for you here depends on the pitcher shape, volume of milk, steam tip, and steam volume, but the correct results always look the same: you want to get a very active whirlpool of milk. On my setup, I will plunge the tip about ½ into the milk and tilt the pitcher about 30 degrees, and I’ll have an instant whirlpool. Stop texturing when outside of stainless pitcher is too hot to hold for >2s, and make sure your heat tolerance doesn’t end up scalding the milk. Knock the pitcher on the countertop once or twice to break up any large bubbles, and then swirl it in the pitcher. You’ll soon see the latex look. Pour it into the waiting espresso shot(s). For extra points, pour a rosetta, heart, or apple – latte art really only works with proper micro-foamed milk, so it is a good test. We started by frothing water + 1 drop of dish soap and pouring the results into a clear glass to make sure that the bubbles were distributed everywhere in the water. Once I mastered the soap, we moved to milk. I was pouring my first rosetta within an hour. Some other things I’ve pick up on: colder milk steams better, fattier milk is easier to foam, and processing does make a difference (different brands of milk foam differently).

Marlene, that's a very interesting option. Do you have first or second hand experience with it?

I haven't contacted CBO yet (as I said, I'm not at the stage of being serious), but they appear to be more expensive than Forno Bravo. I did find a couple of their ovens at Sur La Table for $3500.

I think we may be on the same journey. I posted the pictures of the blue Kamados above. Since that picture, I've experienced problems with the Kamado that have soured me on the brand. But I still love ceramics for low-and-slow and grilling, so I've moved on to the Komodo. It is definitely "the good company", and the product is much better than the Kamado. And I'm lusting after a backyard wood burning oven. We're in the middle of a patio/deck remodel that should leave me a perfect space (and foundation) for something like a forno bravo oven. My wife is actually open to the idea, but I think she's leaning toward something on wheels like the Batali oven from Chicago Brick Oven. I'm still in think-mode on this one. I'm pretty much all remodel-exhausted for the year, so the earliest I would consider building one would be next summer. Good luck if you move ahead and please post your experiences. edit -- perhaps I should update my avatar...

Even if your evaluation was correct (which it isn't), your parochial understanding of cultural relativism and the historical outcomes are flawed. I could also blame your list of ills on provincialism, and I would be able to associate your position with apartheid et al, but ultimately it would be as fundamentally wrong as your statement. But I think it is far more interesting that your arguments redirect from PETA's public and stated goals in this foie gras campaign and in their overall campaign to move everyone to a vegan diet. From PETA's own statements, this is not about changing to less cruel animal husbandry practices as your posts characterize. It is about removing the product from our plates -- no matter how it was raised. While less cruel approaches certainly have merit, it is a huge leap that we can support PETA's bans, improve approaches, and avoid moving toward PETA's total ban on meat and animal products. I'm curious: Given the stated support for at least some of PETA's goals on this thread, and in some cases praise -- is anyone a member of PETA?

No. Supporting legislation banning serving foie gras: http://blog.peta.org/archives/2007/05/save_chicagos_b.php Supporting legislation banning production of foie gras: http://www.peta.org/mc/factsheet_display.asp?ID=97 "Contact PETA for a foie gras action pack and for information on how you can support legislation to prohibit force-feeding." Further attempts to legislate what is on your plate: http://www.peta.org/actioncenter/ActionAlerts-item.asp?id=3046 Note the website these are hosted on. I'm sure there are many more examples, but this is all I came up with in 10 seconds...

Actually Paul, the OP was quite clear that the issue at hand is the PETA campaign to ban foie gras, that this campaign might drive production to Chinese factory farms, and a later implication that PETA was imposing their morality onto your dietary decisions. For some, their decision to support/oppose PETA on this issue relies only on this issue, and they can look at the issue in a vacuum. They will weigh the cruelty of the operation and likely their own personal stake in the outcome to make a decision. You seem to be on this path. I'm on a different path. I'll try to answer the same cruelty issue as you, and likely conclude that cruel husbandry is bad and should be banned. But those geese didn't look abused in the video, so I'd have a hard time supporting a blanket ban of the product. Second, I would also look to see what rights are being limited. As mentioned up-thread, I have all rights except those removed. So don't worry: there will be no eating of endangered animals or the neighbor's children. But I do have the right, and I'll support others' rights to eat foie gras, with emphasis on the second part since I really don't even like it And if you think this comes from a sense of entitlement, you're sadly mistaken. It comes from a deep sense of trust that others are able to be guided by their own morals rather than forcing mine upon them. In the scheme of things edible, I have every reason to not let PETA force their morals onto my plate.

Silly comparison, but I can see how you arrived at it. Perhaps our world views are so completely different that you cannot understand the point some are making. From reading your statements comparing the right to eat foie gras to rights spells out in the Constitution, it seems you believe that you only have the rights explicitly given to you. I believe we have all rights except for those explicitly taken away. Since there are no laws right now limiting my right to eat foie gras (at least in most places), then I do claim that right, and no amount of foot stamping from others will take it away. If they attempt to get laws passed that will take it away, I will fight to maintain that right. It is offensive that you argue against your own strawman arguments. You quote "god given right" -- although only you brought up the strawman. Even better was your own insinuation that someone was "slandering PETA" when the data is on PETA's own web site. Your conclusion that PETA has virtually zero chance of success reveals your lack of understand of the political nature of their campaign. You shouldn't be so naive about the political nature of the FDA (hint: "administration"). Getting foie gras banned establishes a precedent for future bans. And if you think that they will not use a precedent to try to achieve their overall goal...

There's a bunch of people who have experimented with different ways of preserving their coffee on a different board. Now you have to remember that these are real coffee geeks. Here's the typical MO: They are using very fresh roasted beans -- typically 2-3 days off roast if they're buying, or 0 days if they roast it themselves They are typically espresso drinkers, and some of them are professional cuppers They are using whole beans and grinding just before making a shot They would consider coffee ground >15 *minutes* ago to be stale and not use it Most (all?) of them know what their espresso should taste like and can identify faults (esp the cuppers) They concluded that freezing the beans in an air-tight container with a minimum of air will severely slow down the aging process, including off-gassing. Some are using mason jars, some ziplock freezer bags, and others are using the sealed coffee bags with the airlock taped over. If you bring the beans to room temp in the unopened container, then you will avoid any condensation. They were able to enjoy high quality espresso with months-old frozen beans. I don't remember anyone using a vacuum sealer, and I would think that you would accelerate off-gassing and leeching of oils/volatiles with a vacuum. Personally, I wouldn't do it. I've personally tested their conclusion and found it does keep the beens in their zone while frozen. I used both ziplocks and taped-over coffee bags, and the coffee kept for weeks. Once at room temp, I removed from the bag and used it normally. Coffee that went in while still off-gassing started off-gassing once it was defrosted and entered the zone within a couple of days. Coffee in the zone stayed in the zone. Sorry there was no experimentation with pre-ground coffee. Are you noticing aging effects over those 2 weeks? If not, then I wouldn't change your process.

Mallet, you are presenting a reasonable argument that the type of production is an important point. While I would love to discuss the starvation and disease that would likely result from banning factory farms, that's another topic and I'm trying to keep the topic on foie gras bans. In any case, the efforts to ban foie gras do not attempt to ban a certain type of factory-like production. Instead, PETA's call to ban foie gras is regardless of the production method. They want to ban it all. Not just foie gras that was produced in factory farms, but *all* foie gras. Reason enough to condemn their goals in this case. So I think you are mistaken: we would still be having this discussion even if all foie gras was produced in your idyllic setting, because PETA *still* wouldn't want the rest of us eating meat. Their publicly stated goal is to remove all animals and their products from our lives (including pets!). Their foie gras campaign is just one in their overall effort to force their morality upon all of us.

Thanks Indirect Heat for the link. I didn't see my argument as a logical fallacy because, as the link says, "strength of the argument is inversely proportional to the number of steps between A and Z, and directly proportional to the causal strength of the connections between adjacent steps". In this case, PETA is quite clear and vocal that their aim is to eliminate all animal products from our diets, so there is no need to travel from A to Z -- PETA is quite clear that Z (no meat) is their goal, and A (foie gras) is the start.

I'm curious why you think a "slippery slope" argument is a false argument. Is it the type of argument or this instance? You provide so little actual data supporting your statements that I couldn't tell. In any case, it is well established that PETA's aim is to stop all meat consumption. All meat from farms. All hunting. All fishing. They truthfully state this as one of their campaigns on their website. They are following a classic divide-and-conquer strategy toward this end. In this case, they are isolating a small portion of society ("ridiculous luxury goods for the overprivileged ranks") in order to establish a small victory. They are, of course, depending on an apathetic response from those not directly affected (and seen on this very thread!) in order to gain that victory. If and when they achieve it, they will constantly expand their campaign toward their stated goal. Fascinating too that you would look to others to grant you the 'right' for what you decide to eat, especially for what has been produced from domesticated animals for hundreds of years. I prefer to eat by my own morality rather than PETA's. I personally find it tragic when lack of knowledge results in "ironic humor". Our natural omnivore diet resulted in the domestication of animals about 10000 years ago IIRC. How we raise our livestock for food is indeed part of our natural history.

Some people are just uncomfortable with our natural omnivore diet, and they are working hard to change it. The strategy employs class warfare since, for most people, "ridiculous luxury goods for the overprivileged ranks as a pretty low priority" for them. So they stand passively by while others have their rights and freedoms limited. If that is effective, you can pretty much guarantee that bigger game will be hunted (so to speak), and eventually you're ability to eat anything more complex than a blade of grass will be severely limited. So just keep thinking that "ridiculous luxury goods for the overprivileged ranks as a pretty low priority" doesn't affect you in the least...

Thanks for the soapstone feedback, Ray. We're leaning toward them for the same reason: immunity to stains and heat. Plus, we are putting together a 'working kitchen', and the granite my wife was looking at would have knocked up the formality level too much. Luckily she also likes the look and feel of soapstone. We went to a few stone houses in the Seattle area last week to look more closely at their soapstone slabs. Unfortunately, while these are warehouse-sized buildings with hundreds of different slabs, the soapstone slabs can usually be counted on one hand. The biggest surprise was the range of hardness. One of the more 'movement'-filled slabs we looked at was easily scratched and chipped by digging in with my fingernail. The one on the next stand, which had a great 3d-like layering of black and green, got some surface marks from my fingernail but nothing I would say was a scratch. We got a sample of the softer one and we've been torturing it at home: scratching it with a nail, running pans over it, attemping to stain with red wine, etc. We love the fact that small marks do disappear with mineral oil, and bigger scratches can be removed with med sandpaper and then oil. At this point, we need to see more types and hardnesses. Are there any geologists in the house that can shed some light on the relationship between the two? I'm guessing that white veining is softer talc in the mix and that leads to scratching/chipping. Is that correct or completely wrong ? We really like the material, and we'll be happy if we can find the right balance of hardness and interesting movement.

Thanks for the link. We've been reading all we can about soapstone, both on and off eGullet. We're going back to the stone vendors to look at slabs next week to see if we can find something that we like. For the island, we'd like something with some movement, and I'd like to understand the effect on hardness if there is significant movement (talc?) in the slab. Hopefully I'll be able to get some samples from them to put through some tests...

So I was dragged to the stone warehouses to look at granite slabs a few days ago. I saw little I liked, except for the soapstone. I understand that it is impervious to stains, but that it will develop a patina of scratches and dents that can be removed with oil and sandpaper. Does anyone have any experience with soapstone as a countertop material?

The air line from outside to the air return (and into the furnace plenum) is the basic idea. I have a larger one than displayed in the video, and it appears that it'll grow by 2x for the right amount of MUA. I also have a motorized vent cover that only opens when the timer goes off for fresh air. This control will also have to be triggered when the hood is on. We've nixed the pot filler. My wife has been off looking at granite, so there hasn't been much to write. Tomorrow we're heading to an appliance store to see some details on the range, fridge, and some samples of Abbaka hoods. But I have been looking into water filtration. I have an espresso machine that I can plumb directly into a cold water line, but the water should be filtered. In addition, the fridge we've been looking at has an ice maker and water dispenser. Instead of buying the expensive filters for the fridge, I was going to install the available blank/bypass in the fridge, and use the espresso filter for both. My water is not particularly hard (about 5 grains -- which is just about perfect for espresso), so I don't want to soften. Usually the water quality is excellent, although sometimes in the summer our water district may get some water from Seattle and there might be a chlorine taste. I've been thinking of using the Bunn EasyClear EQHP-25. The cartridges cost about $60 and will go for 6-12 months between changes. There is activated carbon for off-flavors, as well as particle filtration. Anyone have any experience with these or similar ones from CUNO or everpure or... Has anyone run a water outlet to an appliance like a counter-top espresso machine? How did you run the line? I'm thinking of something like a smurf tube, extending from the cabinet containing the filter to low on the backsplash behind the machine. I'll have a drilled tile in front of the smurf tube for running the water line through. A simple new tile will hide the whole thing should that become necessary.

Thanks Ray. I did in fact run across these, and my FIL (the HVAC engineer) also suggested that we might want one. My HVAC contractor, who will be updating the system for MUA, said that all fresh air exchange systems around here feed directly into the furnace plenum to temper the air before circulating into the house. With the typical outside temperature around here, our furnace or AC should be able to bring the air to room temp in a single pass (although it might be on high heat or chill). As part of this discussion, he has shown me numbers on fuel savings vs. exchanger systems that indicate the break-even point would be many times the useful lifetime of the system. The climate around here is a lot milder than my FIL is used to. Are these exchangers common in CT? My plan is for MUA to follow the same path. The HVAC contractor thought that would certainly work. Are we thinking about this wrong? Is MUA fundamentally different than fresh air exchange?

So one question in the design that has come up is the water source behind the stove. I think it is called a pot filler. My wife and I are leaning toward not having one, based on the idea that if we can't carry a pot to the stove, what do we expect to do with it once it is full and on the stove Do you have one and how do you use it? Would you get one again? Or is it a blight on your beautiful backplash? thanks!

I've heard and read multiple stories like this: home owner or contractor puts in powerful gas cooktop/range and great big hood, but forgets about make-up air, and all hell breaks loose. The story would be have been the same for me except that my father-in-law is a mechanical engineer specializing in commercial building hvac systems, and he nudged me to look into this part of the equation. Our house is fairly new (aka air-tight), and the furnace/hot water heater are in the garage behind a fire door. So our 1400 cfm would have been moving little actual air. Based on the reaction of our contractor, I doubt he would have done anything about it unless I've raised it. But I can't really hold that against him too much; it just seems par for the course where code doesn't require it.

Yes 1400 cfm is on the high side, but I figured that it was better to upsize a bit than wish it was more after installation. Plus, both hoods have continuously variable fan speed control, so I should be able to set it to whatever it needs to be without being forced to got to High. Wolf recommends 1500 cfm with the 60" range, but that would include the grill/griddle models and I'm skipping those. I also found "rules-of-thumb" that you should have 100 cfm per square foot of hood opening for hoods against the wall. I've got 11 sq ft so that works out to 1100 cfm. Finally, I'm going to attempt to protect foreheads by raising the hood a little from the recommended 30" above the counter. I'm going with 34", which raises the cfm necessary for the increased volume. Abbaka thinks that 1400 @ 34" would work well. No pictures/drawings yet (I'll post soon), but the duct run will be short. The plan is to have a rear exit from the hood. The run will be straight through the wall to the fan, although Abbaka is recommending that I think about some duct outside to further isolate the noise. They claim the noise with the fan ~1 ft away will still be less than their internal blowers, and 5 ft away will be very quiet. Bud, thank for the pointer on duct sizing. Abbaka recommends 10" round for 1400 cfm. I'll check with them again. The HVAC guys have done a once over and recommend a second 8" intake (we already have a 8" for fresh air replacement). The contractor's plan is to put a second intake in parallel into the furnace plenum, and then cycle the furnace blower to come on (just like during a fresh air cycle). Our furnace can apparently move 2400 cfm, so it should be able to keep up. This will introduce tempered filtered air throughout the house when the hood is on. I am thinking of having some additional vents installed into the kitchen on the island bottom facing the range, but not sure about that yet. One frustrating thing is the near complete lack of references on make-up air design available. HVAC guys know about this, esp the commercial kitchen guys, but general contractors tend to be clueless as well as appliance vendors. When I talked to the hood manufacturers, they were a little better, but ultimately said "Talk to your HVAC guys." If you have any references or wisdom here, it would be much appreciated!

Hi eGulleters We hate our kitchen. Well, the kitchen itself isn't so bad. But we really hate our downdraft exhaust. Like most of them, it doesn't suck and that, well, sucks. We have a island with a 36" 6 burner NG cooktop with a 36" motorized downdraft behind it. The thing has broken a few times, and parts are getting harder to find to fix it. In short -- we're done with it. The last time this thing broke, we started talking seriously about putting in a real hood above the cooktop. We even went so far to get a kitchen designer in because we thought it would be a challenge to vent an island hood. Kitchen is on the 1st floor with a bedroom above it on the 2nd. Kitchen is in the corner of the house, but the easiest run outside (with the joist directions in the ceiling) would put the vent exhaust over our deck. The only other outside wall would require venting through quite a few joists... So we put the idea on ice for a few years. Then our wall oven failed (a KitchenAid) and it was replaced with a Miele double oven. My wife, who had just finished up in culinary school (pastry), was and still is very happy with it. I should have known that double 30" temperature-stable ovens would come back to bite me, but my excuse is that she was 8.5 month pregnant when the oven failed 3 days before Christmas. Replacement (and happiness) was a priority! Finally, the downdraft broke again and we said that we're really done with it. This time we were more serious. We're approaching our 15th anniversary, and a few months before that will be my 20th year at the same company. We can't think of a better reason to rip apart the kitchen to the studs and be cooking on the bbq all summer. Oh yeah -- and hopefully have our dream kitchen at the end of it. At this point, we're about 1/2 way through the design portion. We've done layout and we're getting into materials at this point. I wanted to share our story with the hope of feedback (many more sets of eyes) and that this might help someone else. We start thinking about cooking appliances. The initial idea was to go with a double Miele wall oven (again) and a Wolf 36" or 48" rangetop (with the open burners), and a real hood above the cooktop. We would move the rangetop/hood to the exterior wall where we have a fridge now, and the island would become prep-only. The fridge would end up where our oven was, and the only problem was where to put the ovens. And we really really didn't want to move any exterior walls and raise the price of this remodel. Long story short: there was no place to put wall ovens that didn't seem shoe-horned in. We cut out templates in graph paper and moved them around. The designer tried a few ideas, including giving up a real fridge and moving to drawers (which we veto'ed). We finally decided to give up some lower cabinet space and move to a dual fuel range: a 60" Wolf dual fuel with frenchtop. And that's the first question out there: anyone have a frenchtop? We're going with the FT because I can't see using a grill or griddle since they both seem like they'd be a constant mess, and my bbq is ~40 feet away outside under cover. The other point for the Wolf was the electric ovens. They are apparently as temperature-stable as the Miele, and my wife (the baker) wants the dry heat from electric ovens. I would prefer to have one gas and one electric, but Wolf doesn't do that. We looked at Bluestar and Jade, and their ranges are either gas only or non-self-clean. When I saw a price sheet, I consoled myself thinking that it saved us from expanding the kitchen. That would probably have cost 5-8x more. The designer also worked it well into the plan. The far wall of the kitchen will be the range, some cabinets on either side, and a whole lot of tile. It'll definitely be the centerpiece (so to speak) of the kitchen. So the hood needs to support the aesthetics. The hood. That is the real motivator for this remodel, and we really wanted something that worked. If we're putting that much potential heat under it, we'll want something that can deal with the heat and the occasional cast-iron pan steak sear. We're planning to extend past the side edges of the range, so we're looking for a 66" x 24" hood. Venting with be from an external Abbaka 1400 cfm blower mounted on the outer wall. Anyone with any experience with that blower? We're looking at 2 possibilities right now: a Modern-Aire P31 66"x24"x18" with about 11" of vent cover; or a Abbaka Classic 66"x24"x20" and about 9" of vent cover. Either of these will have brushed SS finish with polished SS accents. Both vendors seem to make the hoods to order, and it seems that just about anything can be customized. Any success stories with Modern-Aire or Abbaka? Looking over this, I see I've written a long first post on this project. I'd love any feedback on the Wolf or our venting ideas. As this solidifies, I'll post more info on it. We expect to demo the kitchen in June and have our kitchen back before school starts. We'll see how well that goes

Hi all, We're about to head to Maui. My inner espresso geek does not allow me to step into Starbucks, so I'll be packing my travel espresso maker that uses whipped cream chargers (I've used ISI chargers in the past). Unfortunately the FAA takes a dim view of carrying or checking these on airplanes, so I'll be looking for chargers once there. I've called the Safeway in Kihei, but they don't seem to carry them (and apparently have never heard of them). Any ideas where I can buy these chargers? thanks!

I couldn't agree more, Adam Chef! I have found espresso to be a fascinating topic over the last year. Unfortunately, I'm not sure that chefs, even those in restaurants where they carefully choose ingredients and treat them with the utmost care, share your respect for the bean. Even here in Seattle, it is incredible how bad espresso is in restaurants. It probably compares well with a Starbucks shot, but that is the same as damning it with faint praise. My bar is the espresso I can make at home, and I've never had a shot in a restaurant that I could actually drink. There are plenty of 3rd wave cafes in Seattle (like Vivace, Zoka, Victrola, Stumptown, etc), so it isn't like Starbucks is the best game in town. Now I am gun-shy about even thinking about an espresso to end a meal here... My personal voyage of discovery really started about a year ago. My wife's single boiler pump machine broke down, and I started to look into replacing it for her. At the time, I wasn't a daily drinker, as I was not impressed with what came out of that machine or what was widely available in the area at the usual chains like Starbucks and Peets. My wife wanted convenience, so we went to a local store (where they had everything from levers to single-boilers to heat exchangers to double boilers -- all on and ready to pull shots) to demo super-autos. After a walk around the store, we were offered a shot from some Jura machine. After being suitably impressed with the cleverness of the entire machine, and remarking how the shot was better than the broken machine's best efforts, I happened to ask about all the other machines. She led us over to a row of gleaming E61 HX machines and proceeded to pull shots from one of them. It was significantly better than the Jura -- sort of like 3 dimensional instead of the jura's very flat tasting shot. We left with the HX and a new grinder. Over the next few months, I learned a lot. I found a local micro-roastery where I could get artisan fresh beans on my way to work (usually roasted that morning and needing a rest). This was the single biggest upgrade in the cup: use a very high quality product that hasn't been roasted to char. Next I learned a lot about grinders and the effect of the right bi-modal particle-size distribution in the puck during extraction (which resulted in a grinder upgrade). I learned the importance of brew temperature on the HX and how to control it reasonably well. During one of my stops at the roastery, I got to play with a La Marzocco GS3, a double boiler with excellent brew temp control due to the PID and saturated group, and decided that the machine did a far better job at a constant brew temp than I ever could. That resulted in another upgrade. I'm still learning, and I think that there will be much more to learn. We've just started a renaissance in the last few years. For the last 60 or so years, companies have been building machines to deliver on Dr. Illy's research. The current crop of top tier manufacturers are starting to question some of those fundamentals and are experimenting. Companies like La Marzocco, Synesso, and Slayer are going to make things very exciting over the next few years. And please don't believe than I'm bashing Starbucks. I do not like their products, but I do think they are directly responsible for the current espresso renaissance that we're in. You see, when they had the semi-auto La Marzocco Lineas in their stores, they were buying about 1 per day from the US distributor. Seeing the opportunity, the US distributor "bought the company" and established LM R&D here in Seattle. When Starbucks went with another vendor's super-auto, LM was severely affected and dropped a lot of their R&B. That directly lead to the establishment of Synesso and indirectly to Slayer. When those companies raised the bar, LM responded with the GB5, GS3, and now the Strada. It is a great time to be into espresso. Sorry for the length of this email, but I'm excited about the future. Hopefully more chefs can see the similarities as you do, and significantly raise the bar on espresso in restaurants.