Subject: Coffee

• Fun With Fedoras

  September 21, 2007

• Downtown's Back, Along with McD's Heartland Latte

  January 10, 2008

• Coffee: The Blood of Christ

  June 19, 2008

• Coffee: The Blood of Christ

  June 19, 2008

• Pete Licata of PT's is the Prince of Coffee

  July 10, 2008

• Baristas and a Book

  August 6, 2008

• Happenings on 39th Street

  August 27, 2008

• Weird Drink Roundup: Red Espresso and Alcohol ßG Killer

  September 4, 2008

• Drinks of Autumn: Non-Alcoholic

  October 16, 2008

• Drive-through coffee: We need Java Girls!

  October 30, 2008

• Grounds for Success

  December 27, 2001

• Best Signature Coffee Drink

  October 17, 2002

• Coffee Talk

  October 31, 2002

• One step to amazing coffee

  Yesterday, Lifehacker published a piece on getting a great cup of coffee without spending loads of money. In other words, making the coffee you brew at home better. (Sorry, no matter how many Starbucks hacks there are, it'll never be that cheap.)Lifehacker has six tips. While they're all helpful, as a serious coffee drinker -- we're talking 12 cups a morning -- I've found there's pretty much only one tip serious coffee drinkers need to know. So throw out the other five hints and focus on this on

  February 2, 2009

• Starbucks instant coffee: The end is near!

  I don't prophesy doom too much, but if I had told you six months ago that Starbucks would be selling instant coffee, you would have given me one of those looks saved for Japanese game shows and street preachers.Well, start stockpiling gold bullion. Starbucks is selling instant coffee. As early as next month, it will introduce Via, which it's spinning as a "soluble-coffee" product. From Ad Age: "Starbucks declined to comment on the launch, which is said to be a long-term pet project of Chief Exec

  February 13, 2009

• Most Crushworthy Local Barista (Male)

  October 9, 2003

• Pie and Dry

  November 27, 2003

• A slushie and an oil change

  Fat City blogger Owen Morris posted a story this morning about the difficulty in finding a free cup of coffee that was really, you know, free. One place where I can always count on a free cup of java -- it's not always good, but it is free -- is at one of those oil change operations, like Jiffy Lube, Speedy Lube, Valvoline and so on. There's usually a small lobby with a coffee machine, a daily paper and a few magazines. And coffee is very important if you've arrived shortly after dawn

  February 19, 2009

• Big day at Starbucks

  StarbucksIf you stop by Starbucks today (or anytime in the near future), you'll notice things are a little different. Yes, the large menu signs with their $4 coffees from a different era will still be on the wall but next to them will be new signs, more pedestrian signs promoting the previously unheard-of Starbucks value menu. It offers six meals, each for $3.95, which Starbucks says will save customers "as much as $1.20, and with 100 percent ethically traded coffee and high quality ingredients,

  March 3, 2009

• I'll take a dirty greeting card and an espresso

  When Larry Gilbert and his partner Brian Heinen opened Out There Cards at 205 Westport Road (in the space formerly occupied by Gilbert's Larry's Cards in the 1990s), they filled every nook and cranny with greeting cards -- including some hilariously vulgar ones -- and candles, gifts, magazines, assorted sexual paraphenalia, holiday decorations and every other imaginable knick-knack and gee-gaw. Beginning Friday, March 6, Out There will also feature its very own coffee shop. Gilbert and Hein

  March 4, 2009

• Will coffee save the planet?

  Flickr: EndlisnisManoranjan Misra of the University of Nevada at Reno may have solved a good chunk of the world's energy problem, while also giving coffee addicts like myself reason to drink that umpteenth cup of the day. Turns out that coffee is a biofuel and a pretty good one to boot. The Economist, which pushes coffee-as-fuel in an editorial, says "researchers found that coffee biodiesel is comparable to the best biodiesels on the market."By now, all the biofuel pessimists like myself are goi

  March 9, 2009

• Viva Via

  I was playing around on Fat City's Twitter page yesterday and feeling like a nap when the UPS man arrived bearing gifts. Caffeinated gifts! Specially, a package from Starbucks containing Via, the company's new instant coffee. When Starbucks announced it was releasing Via last month, I wasn't the only one criticizing the decision. I said something to the effect that all instant coffee is crap. Well Via's Italian Roast and Colombia are not crap. They're good. Damn good. Better than the real cu

  March 12, 2009

• Breakfast Buffet: Monday, 3/23

  You never know what the text message is going to behold when the passenger next to you on the train asks you to proofread it. [Lucubrations]Easter is traditionally one of the busiest days for the food service industry, but restaurants are anticipating a steep decrease in sales this year. [Biz Journal]Eighty-three percent of coffee drinkers are now brewing their own java at home. That is up 5 percent from last year and does not bode well for coffee stores. [24/7 Wall St.]Today is Mother's Day in

  March 23, 2009

• The secret to buying supermarket coffee

  Do you buy your java at the local supermarket or big box store? I do -- with mixed luck. I usually buy what's cheapest or on sale: I've had good luck with those big bags of Roasterie coffee or even the house brand of bean coffee at Costco. I grind my own beans and the morning and those brands taste fresh -- but what do I know? I also buy marked-down bags of coffee beans at Tuesday Morning and TJ Maxx! Jerry Baldwin, a co-founder of Starbucks, has written an article in The Atlantic about buy

  June 3, 2009

• Be extra-nice to your Starbucks' barista today

  There's a good chance your Starbucks' barista just lost out on his or her share of $100 million. That was the fine a Californian judge issued to Starbucks for pooling tips for baristas and shift supervisors. Yesterday, an appeals court reversed that ruling saying that supervisors and baristas are essentially the same thing.The case was brought by a former barista named Jou Chau and ended up encompassing 120,000 former or current baristas who had their tips pooled. Breaking down the numbers,

  June 3, 2009

• Brunch at You Say Tomato

  September 4, 2008

• Good Coffee Music

  January 24, 2008

• Hot, Steamy

  This coffee shop isn't as sexy as a Swiss museum exhibition, but it gives us a warm rush anyway.

  June 28, 2007

• Thong Distractions

  So, stripper clothes guy, do you use the gentle cycle?

  June 7, 2007

• Java Jive

  We take a Coffee Break to celebrate one shop's anniversary.

  August 24, 2006

• Fear of Flying

  August 24, 2006

• Coffee Clash

  Brookside loses one lunch place but gains a café with a pedigree.

  December 8, 2005

• Room With a Brew

  A 39th Street restaurant has transformed a Muddy old space.

  April 28, 2005

• Java the Hutt

  A coffee expert gives KC a jolt.

  November 18, 2004

• Nice Bum

  It’s open season on the Snow Creek ski instructors.

  November 4, 2004

• A Thing of Beauty

  Baristas compete to pour the perfect cup.

  March 25, 2004

• Alaska

  Monday, February 23, at the Bottleneck.

  February 19, 2004

• Espresso Yourself

  Trendy people -- and Chef Michael Peterson's beautiful, small plates -- strikes poses at Segafredo Zanetti Espresso.

  November 27, 2003

• Doggone Adorable

  For some people, dogs are kids.

  October 30, 2003

• Seth Wish

  We venture out on a Tuesday night, abandoning The O.C. for the Cup and Saucer.

  September 11, 2003

• Caffeine High

  At Broadway Café a heart symbol is all about love for coffee.

  November 14, 2002

• Is it iced-coffee weather?

  Yesterday with the rain pouring down, I felt like a nice hot cup of joe. But first, I had to check IsItIcedCoffeeWeather.com to make sure my coffee was supposed to be hot. It was!For those not in the know, IsItIcedCoffeeWeather.com is a Web site where the you enter a zip code and it tells you whether the weather is right for iced coffee.There is no explanation just a big "No. Try it hot," like the one I got yesterday if the weather isn't right for iced coffee. If you live in place where it's hot

  April 30, 2009

• Fight is a brewing: Starbucks and McDonald's take off the gloves

  To paraphrase former Vice President Thomas Marshall, what this country needs is a good one-dollar cup of coffee. Yet McDonald's and Starbucks are determined to take coffee to a higher (and more profitable) level.  Two days ago I was sent this incredibly boring Starbucks' promotional video in which CEO Howard Schultz sits around a table with some frightened baristas and asks them what they think of Starbucks' new print ads. Surprise! The baristas say they like them and they all laugh at the

  May 5, 2009

• Now Open: Grand St. Coffee

  Grand St. Coffee owners Scott Mullins and Nathan Anderson admit not knowing much about the coffee -- or restaurant -- business before opening their new store at 2015 Grand last Friday. But they do know what their built-in customers want. "We own the building and this space was just a shell. So we surveyed the loft owners and asked them what they wanted," Anderson said while passing out fliers for the business in front of the store. "We went off of what they told us, and the fact that there reall

  May 20, 2009

• Starbucks trying not to be Starbucks anymore

  What does it say about Starbucks that the company's closing stores, only to reopen them under a different name? It says that despite an expensive ad campaign and lowering prices, Starbucks is still struggling to shake its pre-recession image.The new non-Starbucks Starbucks will not only feature different names but also wine, beer, poetry readings and, most importantly for coffee drinkers, real manual espresso makers instead of the automatic push systems the company has been so criticized for. Th

  July 17, 2009

• Toddy coffee comes to Waldo

  The Coffee Girls has relocated from the Crossroads to Waldo, bringing toddy coffee and an updated menu to its new neighborhood.  The coffee shop, which opened two weeks ago, sits adjacent to Kennedy's Bar. Both venues have the attractive feature of sliding glass windows that can be opened when the weather is nice. Coffee Girls also has a wraparound patio.

  July 21, 2009

• Frozen coffee drinks are closer to meals than drinks

  ​As kids, we kept hearing that breakfast was the most important meal of the day. Now it turns out the choices we're making in the morning can have some big ramifications on our health. From Eat This, Not That  (the sister blog of the book by the same title) comes a list of frozen coffee drinks that can take up a big chunk of your recommended daily calorie intake. Consider the Oreo n' Cookies Cappuccino Blast from Baskin Robbins -- which runs you 950 calories, 37 grams of fat, and 111 gram

  August 6, 2009

• Coffee clash! Will Starbucks lose customers?

  ​There's been some concern percolating in the media and blogosphere -- and Wall Street! -- lately about the decision by Starbucks to raise the prices of some of their products -- you know, those "complex" drinks like fancy, Venti-sized lattes and such. Other, less complicated coffee drinks will see a slight price decline. Will loyal Starbucks patrons stay loyal if their morning java drink costs a quarter more? Before you imagine mass revolt of Starbucks addicts, consider this: currently,

  August 25, 2009

• What's Puck-o-lating in the world of coffee

  ​Just as he has done with pizza and airline food, celebrity chef Wolfgang Puck is hoping to change the iced coffee market. Nation's Restaurant News reports that Puck will be rolling out a line of bottled iced coffee drinks along the line of Starbucks' Frapuccinos. The Wolfgang Puck Culinary Iced Coffees will come in four flavors: Vanilla Fusion, Double Blend Mocha, Creme Caramel and Cafe Au Lait. A single bottle of the packaged coffee drink will cost $2.39, a four-pack $7.99."The coffees selec

  October 15, 2009

• Does anybody drink a basic cup o' joe these days?

  ​On occasion, Fat City is written from the hallowed tables of coffee shops across the city and over the past several weeks, it's become apparent to me that everything but coffee seems to be going out the door. Take for example a recent lunch hour I spent at Coffee Girls in Waldo -- here's a sample of the orders that I overheard at the counter: Toddy coffee (my order); double shot of espresso; a water; umm ... a Diet Coke; steamed skim milk and decaf coffee; hot tea. Not a single cup of unadult

  November 13, 2009