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2011-05-23
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Not many time I had a chance to go out of the way, particularly out of the subway line to this nice area of Happy Valley. I was told of this nice café and was earlier warned of its imported coffee that won’t fit my bill. As someone said before, have an open-minded attitude and just drink it. Despite my experience that was mostly against coffee from imported bean and warning from coffee enthusiasts I know on the coffee here, let try it anyway.The shop looks really nice and great for the neighb
The shop looks really nice and great for the neighborhood. Inside, it's quite airy and very comfy to sit with an outdoor area like Cafe Corridor in Time Square that customers can smoke. Somebody had cigar on that day and, unlike cigarette, I actually don’t mind its smell at all and, on the contrary, quite happy about it.
Started with a safer choice of milk drink as I hope milk will do the cover up job to make the cup drinkable. But I got some glitches at the beginning. In the picture, I was told the top cup is latte but turned out to be Cappuccino; the latte was at bottom. The café uses the same mug/glass for both cappuccino and latte, easily resulting in the confusion and mixed up, i.e. I don’t blame the staff there. Only after I used the spoon to partly destroy the milk cap and ruining some texture/mouthfeel of the frothed milk did I guess which is which and found out about the mixed up of the drink. This could have been easily solved via different design or cup size; my preference is the latter to give a milkier taste of latte. Hope this issue have the ear of the power that be thought I really doubt anything will happen.With all these things out of the way, the good news is that both cups tasted surprisingly good, particularly considering the nature of its imported coffee used. I can sense some velvety texture and some milk sweetness which goes well with some chocolate tone rendered by its coffee base. Nice job for its barista.
I can’t say the same thing to its black coffee which used coffee from Trucillo brand. I later found out it’s the red stripe BAR product line that they used it there. While there is a dearth of information of what is in the coffee, definitely there is some robusta in there as Trucillo has a 100% Arabica on display in a black stripee bag.The espresso tasted very typical of imported Italian coffee, staled and lagging with no distinct tasting note even the shot was quite short one should expect a distinct taste, body/mouthfeel and aftertaste. Nevertheless, the cup did not elicit any rancidity like what Cafe Y Taberna did to me a day earlier. The crema on top looks pathetically thin and the color of the crema looks quite pale more akin to what one gets from super auto machine with "crema enhancer/froth aider, etc" which could imply bad brewing, underextraction or the status of the coffee at the time. Whatever it is, it's bad and I'm not sure it's worth it to find out why it is the way it is, ie a waste of time for a coffee drinker as I’m not the barista or those men behind the counter. Nevertheless, it got worse after an hour I felt uncomfortable with the tasting note of stuffy, sweaty and very uncomfortable/restless/headache, my typical response to high caffeine content from Robusta bean used in this blend; the robusta usage is very typical for Italian coffee though not all used them.
I am sure that the owner heard a lot of comment on the state of its coffee and I don’t expect any change even the cup quality was seriously flawed due to the bean treatment and bean choice. If one want comparison, do a café crawl between this Coffee Plus and Barista Jam which shares the same espresso machine, La Marzocco GB5, and likely the grinder too. Or substitute Barista Jam with 18 Grams. It’s not that hard to understand why freshness trumped from this easy café crawl.
I didn't have a chance to try this cheesecake and chocolate but I don't have much opinion with this kind of food anyway. In conclusion, too bad, it’s such a nicely decorated place. So if you are there, play it on the safe side and order only milk drink even though the afternoon belongs more to black coffee. If black coffee is so important to you, go elsewhere that do care about its coffee bean choices and treatment. The barista at Coffee Plus and most staff are good but the bean is not. Good chef can only help bad raw material to a certain limit; so does good barista. The other way is much easy, i.e. good raw material and OK chef/barista. I wonder what Coffee Plus is thinking even after lots of voices from coffee enthusiasts on this issue.
张贴
