by J. Michael Wheeler
While many coffee aficionados feared that Starbucks would vanquish all the great little coffee houses around the country, I was never one of them. In fact, most cities and towns never had great coffee houses to begin with. Maybe with the exception of New York, San Francisco, and a couple of isolated towns or cities, great (or even good) coffee was hard to come by. Starbucks changed all of that.
Nick Pandolfi, in Food & Wine (9.08), writes "Food insiders are as excited to talk about coffee bars as they are restaurants: The quality has gotten that good. Here [are], the classic and new places around the country with the most fanatical devotees."
The piece is entitled best u.s. coffee bars and it is a survey of the state of coffee bars from the “old guard” (the oldest of this guard has been around for only 13 years!) to the “new stars.”
Heading up the Old Guards are Joe the Art of Coffee (New York City, joetheartofcoffee.com), Gimme! Coffee (Ithaca, NY gimmecoffee.com), Blue Bottle Café (San Francisco bluebottlecoffee.net), Intelligentsia Coffee & Tea (Chicago, intelligentsiacoffee.com), Stumptown Coffee Roasters (Portland, OR stumptowncoffee.com), and Lamill Coffee Boutique (Los Angeles, CA lamillcoffee.com).
The New Stars are Bloc 11 Café (Somerville, MA tel: 617 623.0000), Abraço (New York City abraconyc.com) 3Cups: Wine, Coffee, Tea Merchants (Chapel Hill, NC 3cups.net), and Coffee Slingers (Oklahoma City, OK coffeeslingers.com).
A rising tide (of coffee) raises all cups. Thanks Starbucks.
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