Hard News: Just some links, really
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This font is funny
'average length between clicks' -
Very interesting about the coffee. I've just moved to London and have found it a little challenging for coffee so far, although the potential is good. I put them a couple of years behind NZ, but they will catch up, there are espresso machines everywhere. Generally espresso ranges from about $3.8-$7, so it is only mildly more expensive than home, so long as you avoid Starbucks.
There is a place in Soho (Berwick St) called Flat White, which is NZ/Australian owned and run I believe which makes more sense now I know about the history. Very good coffee, sadly their lammingtons cost 2.5 pounds, and are by far the most expensive baked good. Price collusion for lammingtons in London is worrying, I've not seen one for less than 2.50, and they are rather small and sad looking. On the other hand the waffle scene is pretty dammed good, far superior to Welllington.
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Of course, the pure espresso is a bit of an exaggeration - there are still old-style cafes (as in "cafs") around that will do filter coffee, and quite a few of the Turkish places around Wellington will do delicious Turkish coffee.
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Also having just relocated to London, I have found the trick is to stick to straight espresso. Don`t let them muck it up with milk, as they froth it to a bubble-bath consistency, rather than the smooth velvet we are used to in NZ. You can then get a reasonable, but not great, coffee.
However I have found (conveniently close to my flat) a great little cafe in Kennington Lane, in the middle of Lambeth. Called Firozzi, but rather than being Italian as the name might suggest, is run by a couple of Indian women in beautifully tailored saris. The serve coffee as it should be, i.e. a double shot in a small cup with thick crema, and for lattes and macchiatos the milk is properly smooth and velvety. Fantastic.
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Are any other bloggers finding this Gallery-blogging business creepy?
Nah... but it is damn amusing considering the amount of ink split on the op-ed pages condemning bloggers as illiterate, psychotic liars who wouldn't recognise a fact if it bit 'em on the arse and will be personally responsible for the brain-death of the universe. I recall you've even been name-checked a couple of times, Keith. :)
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Are any other bloggers finding this Gallery-blogging business creepy?
I'm loving the comments section of the stuff site as Colin encounters our blogospheres local wingnuts demanding he come clean about his role in the global warming hoax and accusing him of media bias for speaking to the Prime Minister. Not sure how long he's going to put up with it but its good stuff for now.
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Interesting fact about Starbies in London.
In about 1999, a couple of people came back from the US having seen the ubiquity of *$s - inspired by this, they started a clone called Seattle Coffee Company and expanded quickly to around 60 shops.
*$s had already got plans to open in the UK, so seeing this firm, instead of trying to compete, they bought them. For GBP60mln. That's a million pounds (NZD3mln) for each (leased) coffee shop. Good money, eh!
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Are any other bloggers finding this Gallery-blogging business creepy?
It is great to see the main news sites following the lead of Russell and co. PA sets the bar in terms of quality of writing and analysis and great comments participators to boot. I think Colin Espiner was a very credible and good choice for Stuff to kick off with.
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On coffee:
What is unique is that, outside Italy, the Australian and New Zealand café markets are the only other 100% espresso-based markets in the world!
Someone not been to Spain then. The coffee there is the best and most overlooked.
One thing that has not caught on here is the habit of the truckies to kick off their days with a short black and a shoot of brandy.
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Reffe, apparently Monmouth's is a pretty reliable supplier of good coffee too, not that I've seen one yet. I hear they have a stall at the Borough Markets. My local is on Portobello Road in Notting Hillish way, called Coffee Plant. They are pretty good, so far at least and not far to walk.
But what I really want is a good tea shop. I've not really looked, but I had sort of thought every street would have one. Instead every street has like five bookies, which kind of makes me nostalgic for the TAB, which is pretty bloody strange as I don't even gamble.
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Ben, yeah, Monmouth supplies Flat White. I had a beer outside the pub opposite their cafe the other evening, but it was shut so I couldn`t try the coffee. It's only a couple of minutes walk from London Bridge tube stop, next to the Borough Market as you say.
I haven`t seen a good tea shop either, but haven`t exactly been looking for one...sing out if you find one though.
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Will do. Its probably as simple as looking in the yellow pages, but where is the fun in that?
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remember the DKD's Fish in a Bowl?
Yes, though I never had one. On my first date with my partner we went to DKD and she got a Fish in a Bowl. It was too rich and she couldn't drink it, but I was freaking out. "Why isn't she drinking it?! Oh shit she hates me! Better do something cool to impress her." etc etc
Someone not been to Spain then. The coffee there is the best and most overlooked.
I'll go you one better, Portugal. Brazilian coffee served slowly and often with Port. Once you've had a Portuguese gallao (sp?) you'll never want a latte again.
something about coffee in London.
A discovery form my trip last year was a cafe called Sacred just off Carnaby St that was run by Kiwis and had free wifi.
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"This font is funny
'average length between clicks"Off my game, took me all day to get that one...Actually it took getting tired and my eyes blurring.
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3410,
Also having just relocated to London, I have found the trick is to stick to straight espresso. Don`t let them muck it up with milk, as they froth it to a bubble-bath consistency...
Also, according to my mate, they use the steamer and the jug not only for frothing milk but also for making some kind of instant scrambled eggs, and they don't clean it in between, so the steamer arm always has a big eggy glob on the end of it.
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I can confirm that the coffee in Italy is exquisite. The best is served in the South, and the quality degrades ever so slightly as you travel north - but that is more in keeping with the general state of tourism. The closer you get to the south of France the crappier and more expensive everything is.
As for France itself - OMIGOD - I didn't realise they were so bad at making coffee!! The only decent cup I could get was in Paris, but every where else was weak ass yuk.
And as for America ... heh heh heh ... no wonder *buks was such a big thing. Hitherto the coffee was served out of a pot that had been sitting there all day - or for 'freshly brewed' it came out of some pump type thermos thingy next to the till.
One Euro for coffee in Italy. Yum yum yummy yum.
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View time on pages - pah.
Here I am in Holland talking to some guys about AI systems to do stuff, and guess what they are developing in their spare time (actually where there money comes from)?So you wander up to one of those dynamic billboards (you know, portrait plasma screen in the airport). It's got 5 cameras that look at you. They assess the espression you make, and where you are looking on the screen. Next time you wander past a linked screen (these things are centrally managed), they try something a bit more tailored.
Got to say I'm feeling a bit freaked out. Good news is that it won't work as a biometric ID system.
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The bowl for breakfast to dip the stale bread in or whatever, is French in origin, as for putting milk in (carton milk), usually to the black left-over from whenever before for breakfast
This is true, though the milk-and-bread is actually baby food.
But the bowls of chocolate, or warm milk (with nutmeg, sugar and vanilla) and cafe au lait ( "children's coffee") are all meant to be drunk from bowls. We used those bowls for breakfast drinks as children (my Mum was Metis).
The demise of the North American cup of coffee - because coffee in Canada is just as sad as it is in the USA - was actually brought about by the "bottomless cup of coffee" which means that at any restaurant anywhere, you only pay for the first cup of coffee and all subsequent cups are free.
In the olden days when coffee was cheap, they made it strong, but as coffee got more expensive (in the late 70s early 80s) coffee got progressively weaker until it became the undrinkable swill that is served everywhere now. And as the normal cup of coffee became weak, tastes changed and now many people like the weak stuff.
Coffee has always been in NZ as far as I can tell - I have a cookbook entitled Colonial Cookery which is from around 1905 or thereabouts, and there are all sorts of wonderful dessert recipes using coffee, and coffee was the standard post-dinner drink, while tea was for breakfast and the rest of the day.
Actually there are some amazing recipes in that book, though some just too weird to believe, such as Mock Turtle Soup ("...find an old boiling fowl, a goats head with skin removed, cut skull into nice sized pieces...") but that's another topic.
My NZ (from the Hokianga) mother in law told me that coffee had pretty well always been in NZ but no one liked it until iit suddenly rose in popularity - along with gum, chocolate, cameras, face cream, dry cleaning, nylon stockings, junk jewelery, bubble bath, portable gramaphones and record collections, and the sort of slang that is coined and constantly changed by young people - when the US soldiers came to NZ in the 1940. They shocked the locals by desiring a "cup of java" or a "cup of joe" much more than beer.
Anyhow, I am just old enough (50) to have witnessed the demise of the decent cup of North American coffee. In the late 70s coffee lovers mostly switched to the "pay by the cup" fancier coffees - cafe au lait (in a bowl) or the Italian latte (always in a glass) and the Cafe Vienna (very rich, half very strong coffee, half French style chocolate where hot milk is whisked in with ganache) topped with whipped cream and shaved chocolate curls.
But the death and extinction of decent coffee in my hometown Vancouver is especially sad - I am told Starbucks came in and would buy up premises near a popular coffee house and (literally) open several branches within a few minutes walk of the established place, and in the late 90s the last of the great espresso places died, even the old, old Robson Strasse places like the Mozart Konditori and the ironically named Danish Tea Rooms.
So if you go to Vancouver, ask the locals where to get coffee - there are always one or two little places limping along - but mostly coffee in North America is very sad and quite undrinkable.
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Thanks for your coffee story we all seem to love our coffee stories around here.
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The coffee in Vancouver was better than the coffee in San Francisco, last time I visited. In SanFran I was telling my relatives how we couldn't find a decent coffee place and they of course insisted on taking us to the best coffee place in the whole of San Franciso, because of course like all good hosts they know all the best places.
The place was obviously popular because we had to queue for a table, and it had a good write-up evidently, but omigod the coffee was swill. And of course I had to drink it, nod my head, and tell them how right they were, it was indeed the best coffee I had since arriving in San Francisco.
BTW - in my post at the top of the page I neglected to give due credit to a coffee I had in Lyon, France. (If you are ever in France make sure you go to Lyon, it's like Paris [sort of] but cleaner and cheaper). I got it a McDonalds - the only place open at 6.30am - of all places. It was real espresso ...
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