Ristretto, the Sequel (Prequel)

In Hollywood, when a film does well, studios rush to produce another one in order to take advantage of the buzz from the first one. Lots of times they just throw something together and figure that you liked the first one enough that you will go see the second. The results are often bad flicks. Weekend at Bernie’s II is a good example of a terrible sequel. Dumb and Dumberer comes to mind too (though you could argue that it wasn’t much of a drop-off). The sequels to Blair Witch Project, Rocky, Police Academy and The Matrix all left something to be desired.

Not every sequel is bad, though, and sometimes they turn out to be as good or better than the originals. The Godfather II, Superman 2, Shrek 2 and The Dark Knight all were improvements on their predecessors.

The question I had was, if Ristretto’s William Cafe was a movie, what would the sequel be like? Would it be like The Empire Strikes Back (good) or would it be like Grease 2 (awful)?. To find out,  I visited Ristretto Beaumont the other day, dressed as Darth Vader (just kidding!).

To be technically accurate, the Beaumont store, located at the corner of Northeast 42nd and Fremont, is the original Ristretto location. However, I had already gone to the Ristretto on North Williams Avenue, so the trip to Beaumont played the role of a sequel.

Ristretto part un

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First Links of 2011

Happy First Friday. Here are some links from this week:

Coffee hijacks plane! A plane had to make an emergency landing this week when the pilot spilled his coffee on his radio equipment, causing it to send out a hijack signal. Oops. link

Starbucks announced a logo change this week. They removed “Starbucks Coffee” from the logo. The move is supposed to help the company be recognized in non-English-speaking countries as well as expand into other products besides coffee. link

Apparently, at least one “marketing and branding expert” didn’t think it was such a good idea. I think he was just trying to drive traffic to his blog (success!) link

There’s a new app that helps you find the best coffee in San Francisco. If anyone is interested in developing one for Portland, let me know. I’d be interested in working on one with you. link

Snohomish County, Washington is pleased with the results of its new bikini barista regulations one year after it implemented them. link

Chile, on the other hand, has apparently not tried too hard to regulate them. link

A bit of planning advice for people considering opening a coffee shop. link

Starbucks and Kraft, still fighting. Couldn’t Howard Schultz and Irene Rosenfeld get together over a cup of coffee and figure things out?  link

Stumptown’s Duane Sorenson has a frank question about Parisian coffee in an article in the New York Times Magazine’s blog. I don’t think he’s too impressed. link

Unlike another person who tried to rob a Dutch Bros. coffee stand, Caitlin Marie Elsen got off easy, receiving six years in prison. link

With a wave of bad publicity in the last year, the Portland Police department might consider trying “coffee with the cops”. link

Heart Roasters

It is rough to live in a place where there is so much quality coffee available. After leaving the Spunky Monkey the other day, I walked around the corner to Heart, a two-minute walk over to Burnside and up a block. Heart opened in October 2009 and is owned by Wille Yli Luoma, a professional snowboarder from Finland who lives in Portland. The contrast between the two cafés was evident.

Heart

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My Very First Cuban

I stopped in at the Blue Kangaroo Café in Sellwood today and while I was there, Flo, the co-owner of the café, offered me my first cubano. No, the café is not trafficking in illegal cigars from the contentious island nation south of Florida. In the coffee world—for those who don’t know—a cubano is a sweet espresso drink that is prepared by adding sugar to the ground coffee in the portafilter before the barista pulls the shot. You occasionally see them on the menu at a café.  

At the Blue Kangaroo, they also add cinnamon to the coffee and then top the drink off with whipped cream. The cinnamon gives the very rich drink an interesting flavor. You might say that it tastes something like cinnamon toast or a Cinnabon cinnamon roll (a liquid breakfast, perhaps?). I don’t know if I could drink them every day (they’re pretty strong), but as a once-in-a-while treat, they’re worth a try.

I thought I had a picture of it to share with you, but apparently I got over-caffeinated and accidentally deleted the picture I took. Instead, I’ll leave you with a picture of the second double espresso of the day I drank just prior to the cubano (yes, it was quite the morning). My apologies. It’s not as pretty as the cubano, but at least the colors are nice. 

Another caffeinated memory