Yes.

And add to that: simple equipment is fine. Something where you can roughly control the temperature of the brew. For $100, you can forget electronics doing that right for you. I'd stick with a French press, Chemex, or Melitta drip for much cheaper and a bit more labor. They make better coffee.

bushwickgirl, you completely cut and pasted a reply from somewhere else without reading shmulibaby's question.

Roasting coffee, like brewing coffee, is cooking. Sure, you can heat chicken to a certain temperature profile for a given amount of time. But would you really want to do that twice?

The roasting process is as much about the ramp up and ramp down temperature cycles as it is about maximum heat.

You don't like dark roast, and you prefer less acid. Well no wonder why you're hard to please right there -- you're downright incompatible!

It's TV. For all the use of "reality TV", the irony is that TV is nothing like reality. Competitve chef shows are more about on-camera culinary gymnastics than any practical real-world situation.

Japanese food runs the gamut. Here in the U.S., we typically think of only sushi, for example, which you might have in Japan maybe one night a week.

The topic of Japanese food is too broad to really label it en masse, IMO.

If you're into pinot and staying around Healdsburg, I'd get on W Dry Creek Rd and get up to Papapietro Perry. Excellent pinots, a more casual and fun atmosphere, and they even share space and barrels with the Anthill pinot guys.

We all know Alice Waters embodies Chez Panisse. And for all the talk decades ago of Ms. Waters bringing France to America, right now France is importing Alice by the microgreen-garden-full in the form of the "Le Fooding" guide and its various supporters. Le Fooding and its supporters, coincidentally, being the major Michelin iconoclasts in France these days.

Conspiracy theory? No. But there's a major reaction going on inside Michelin these days, and Waters clearly embodies the perceived threat. So I wouldn't be surprised if Michelin is now reacting to this approach to cuisine across the board.

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Chez Panisse
1517 Shattuck Avenue, Berkeley, CA 94709

When you're talking about the price of something at a retail food or beverage establishment -- whether a coffeeshop or restaurant -- you do understand that the #1 cost in anything they do isn't ingredients, it's labor.

Do you?

It's just not clear that you understand that at all from the post you wrote here. Until you comprehend that much, this conversation is kind of pointless.

Thanks, Melanie. Next time I have a spare 18 hours and $1,200 for a plane ticket to Oporto, I'll consider that.

I think they're irreconcilable, and for good reason. Coffee and espresso have different brewing requirements. To do it right, you need to specialize somewhat. There's a reason why mobile homes aren't ubiquitous over separate cars and homes, after all.

But there's a third dimension you're clearly missing here, and that's the grinder. If you're going to drop a few hundred dollars on an espresso machine, unfortunately few (outside of the aforementioned sites from other users) will point out that the grinder can be just as important as the espresso machine. To ignore that is to buy a $10,000 home stereo system and to play it through $20 speakers.

So whatever you do, don't make the mistake of not getting a grinder that's good enough to get the most out of your investment in your machine(s).

Gibraltars? Standardizing on Gibraltars for coffee standards is like standardizing on pinot grigio to choose your favorite Napa or Sonoma Valley winemaker. The beverage is arguably just a niche, local novelty named after the cheap restaurant-supply glass (glass! not even ceramic!) they are served in. (And yes, that is what they're named after.)

Christmas in the Bay Area is about eating crab, IMO. I'll be eating mine at home, thank you very much. :)

There isn't. And with good reason: why would anyone want to? Bringing coffee from New York for sale out here is a bit like selling tea to the Chinese.

La Colombe of Philly has a minor presence in the area with a distribution mini-warehouse in Dogpatch. But that's it as far as East Coast imports really go.

Huh? Beet salad is a cliché in the Bay Area. It's this year's equivalent of all the restaurants that suddenly served burrata cheese appetizers last year.

To be honest, I'm not of much help here because I've come across too many beet salads in restaurants in the past year, stopped ordering them, and can't recall/keep track of them all to offer any specific pointers.

If that was your definition of "commercially crass" -- given the lack of merchandising and items for purchase -- you must have just come out of a cave after hiding for the past 3 decades.

I think the event was pretty botched, but it is a first-time out. Slow Food in Italy labels everything, and here everything just about relied on conversation. Good in theory, but the reality left people with no take-home information for follow-up.

And complaining about a $65 entrance fee for a non-profit? The all-you-can-eat Sizzler is down the block, thank you very much. You don't get it if you came there expecting that.

The problem is that people don't know the shortcuts they're making with buying cheap at Safeway. We're so disconnected with our food production that price often becomes the only differentiator for some folks, because they're unaware of the artificial and questionably ethical tradeoffs being made in the name of cheap food. Just as we don't know the same about cheap fuel, but the reality is finally coming home to roost.

And anyone who complains about the $65 entrance fee for a non-profit because they're expecting some all-you-can-eat Sizzler really has no clue.

Why limit yourself to restaurants? If you have access to a car in the Bay Area and want to check out something ethnic and "rare" (well, particularly for a Chicago native like myself), the Portuguese festas are a real kick.

Sure, the food isn't snob-worthy, and the younger generations of Azorean immigrants roll their eyes at what all the old farts do for fun. But for an outsider, it can be a real cultural adventure. It's the real deal - not something packaged for your visa card. The food, traditionally "sopas", is free (a little like they serve at Christian churches, Sikh temples, and the like as charitable community giving). There are parades and processions with caped and tiara'ed girls, and if you go out as far as the central valley you might even catch an event of what's sometimes called "bloodless bullfighting" that originated on the island of Terçeira.

For a calendar of these regional events:
http://www.idesofca.org/festalist.htm

Slanted Door is one of the last places I'd visit if I was going for "romantic".

None that I know of. They're sticking with direct retail pretty much. Which explains a little of the split between Jeremy and Eileen and why Jeremy's out behind Fourbarrelcoffee now.

Hate to be another person to tell you this, but the Peninsula is a coffee-lover's wasteland. There's little to get excited about between San Francisco and the futon shops along Stevens Creek Blvd. Caffè del Doge in Palo Alto can be hit or miss, but at least they offer a variety of bean options for your espresso -- which is far better than the rest of the peninsula. But you're really in a quandry.

But someone HAS to make notable coffee in the Peninsula soon enough. It's too much of a quality black hole to last that long.

I'm a 4th generation Chicagoan. And I think Zachary's is the best this area has to offer. Most places call it "pizza", but it's pathetic. I mean, how hard can it be to really make a decent basic pizza?

But unlike some of the others here, I never had stuffed pizza (!= deep dish) until after I moved away from Chicago. Always had thin crust pizzas when I lived there, despite the stereotypes. Zachary's makes pizza into a dessert. I'd jump on that action, no question.

One of the things I like about Incanto is the breadth of their palate. The choice of featuring a Roero Arneis, for example, highlights one of the under-appreciated whites in a region that lives in the shadow of its red Le Langhe sisters (Barbaresco, Barolo, and various nebbiolo grape permutations).

Incanto has frequently been reliable for trying new things you don't always see on every other menu in town.

FWIW, the sushi in SF is pretty good. But by "West Coast" standards, there are better options in Seattle and Vancouver, IMO. I'd stick with the conventional wisdom that New Yorkers shouldn't come to SF looking to be impressed by the sushi.

Kokkari is a memorable meal. Town Hall, while good, is not.

I never understood what the fuss was about with Bouchon. I've had significantly better bistro fare around SF.

It's the home of the $15 burger. The food is pretty good. But SF has so much more to offer since the days this place became the focus of a Visa commercial in the 80s.

Last time I swung by the front window, I came face to face with George Lucas dining in there. And just like Mr. Lucas, Fog City's heyday hasn't been seen since the 1980s.

I've always had an irrational fear of Smart & Final -- perhaps because it sounds too much like discount mortuary services.

Speaking of irrational fears regarding "espresso beans" [sic]: Harry & David just announced a recall of theirs today due to mislabeling about their possible milk content (AP News: http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5gQ...).

You have to see my profile to understand my way of life about it!

Darkly roasted beans give you body but no brightness or acidity in the cup. Which makes a pretty one-dimensional espresso rather than an ideal one. (That roundedness is why espressos are typically best made from blends: each adds different elements to the cup in the way a blended scotch or wine is made.) Which is why I respectfully beg to differ. :)

I'm at the BBC too often myself. But in your shoes, presuming they are walking shoes, I might consider heading a block over to 4th Street and going south of the freeway if the weather's nice: Fringale, Zuppa, Coco 500, etc.

It's highly debatable. There are some places that insist there is such a thing as an "espresso" roast. But an espresso can be produced with any roast level. Some of the better ones come closer to the lighter levels of City and Full City rather than Italian or French.

Most roasters, and the coffee roasting industry as a whole itself, does not recognize "espresso" as a legitimate name for a roasting style. That's the root of the misnomer, as you just captured. "Espresso" is more universally considered just a preparation method, and not also a roasting style per se.