Mission Mission

Tierra Mia Coffee, a southern California-based coffee shop, is moving into the Mission and Valencia storefront formerly known as Caffeinated Comics and more recently the short-lived Way Out Cafe. It seems well-loved in LA, but running a cafe in that location has so far bombed. We’ll see if they can overcome that curse and San Francisco’s general coffee snobbery.

Personally, I’m not interested in any coffee beans that haven’t passed through the digestive tract of an Asian palm civet.

P.D. Bird and her morning espresso.

Four Barrel is turning 3 tomorrow and just like last year there will be free coffee all day. Unlike previous years, there will be skee ball:

To celebrate three years of being in business, Four Barrel Coffee will be throwing their annual birthday bash on Tuesday, August 23rd, from 7am to 4pm.  As they do every year, they will be giving away free coffee and espresso drinks all day long.  To add to the fun, Glass Coat Photo Booth will be setting up one of their free photo booths from 12pm-4pm, there will be two Skee Ball units in the back for people to square off against one another, and they’ll be serving free slices of Tartine Cake at noon.  Plus the Pizza Hacker and Rosamunde Sausage Grill will be posted up outside if people want to buy a some lunchtime food.  It’s going to be a doozie.

No word on whether the skee ball units will be dispensing tickets for high scores, which can then exchanged for plastic harmonicas, mini squirt guns, and rubber goblin finger puppets. We’ll check with our source.

[thanks Nicky Koch]

Update: No skee ball prizes

In case you missed my Vietnam live-blogging last month, I picked up some distinctively shitty coffee during my travels. Literally shitty. This coffee is called Kopi Luwak, and it has the unique production process of being eaten by a weasel, shat out, and roasted. It is the most expensive coffee in the world, which obviously means it’s the best. Funny, because you’d think it would be number 2.

After my post, several junkies predictably came forward and took my open invitation to try it out. In fact, most “coffee people” who hear about this crap don’t think twice about giving it a sip. What is it about coffee? I mean, I also love pizza, but if you told me the best pizza was the kind regurgitated by bears I would probably pass.

Anyway, I invited a crack-team over to sample this stuff with the condition that they write down their thoughts for the rest of you to enjoy. Read on, if you want to get the poop, err scoop:

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As Allan mentioned, I’m in Vietnam this week.

You would love it. It’s 90 degrees now. There are more $2 multi-colored fake Ray Bans than you can handle. Dudes just walk up to you on the street with them. Seriously, I buy two more pairs every time I leave the hotel. The pho costs about $2.50 and is as ubiquitous as McDonald’s. Banh Mi sandwiches? Like 50 cents. And then there’s the coffee…

Did you know the most expensive coffee in the world comes from Vietnam? This particular coffee goes for hundreds of dollars per pound in the US, but it’s about 10-15 bucks here. But that cute weasel on the package is not a mascot, it’s part of the manufacturing process.

You see, these are beans that have been eaten by a weasel (technically a civet), passed through its digestive system, and roasted. It’s called Kopi Luwak. Wikipedia says:

Coffee cherries are eaten by a civet for their fruit pulp. After spending about a day and a half in the civet’s digestive tract the beans are then defecated in clumps, having kept their shape and still covered with some of the fleshy berry’s inner layers.

And what exactly does that accomplish?

Research by food scientist Massimo Marcone at the University of Guelph in Ontario, Canada showed that the civet’s endogenous digestive secretions seep into the beans. These secretions carry proteolytic enzymes which break down the beans’ proteins, yielding shorter peptides and more free amino acids.

Whatever you say, science dude. I can attest that the beans are the strongest, richest, most chocolatey coffee I’ve ever smelled. I have not tasted it yet, but I will be bringing some back. Is anyone curious?

Now that you mention it, I can think only of one other type of person that consumes substances that have been passed through anal cavities: a junkie.

Less to complain about at that point. How are you going to justify your excessive drinking?

[pic via @fayesvideo]

Merry Christmas to Philz!

The priciest cup in the Mission just got pricier. Starting January 1st, a cup will set you back 25 more cents, while a pound will cost an extra buck. Hey, they’ve got to offset the cost of the cocaine they sprinkle into each scoop somehow.

Jacob Jaber invites you to email him directly if you have questions or concerns at jacobjaber at philzcoffee dot com where you will likely get the autoreply of, ”It’s the economy, guys.”

Head over to anthonybrown’s Flickr for the scoop.

I actually know a couple of veterans of the Coffee Wars. Most of them switched to tea. A few defectors are said to still be in hiding at McLaren park.

[via the entire internet, and Killing My Lobster]

It’s hard to believe that our favorite warehouse-occupying, wifi-hating, coffee-snob-making coffee house is only 2 years old today. Happy Birthday, Four Barrel!

To celebrate, they are pouring free coffee until 4pm.

[Hat tip: Mission Loc@l]

Rhiannon brags:

I’ve managed, with my superior skill, to convince Alex at Rodger’s Coffee, which serves delicious coffees AS WELL AS Strauss Organic Ice Cream (none of this yogurt hooha) to make me coffee milkshakes, by pouring the hot espresso into ice cream in a plastic togo cup, then stirring it until perfect, and adding a bit of milk.

It’s called “The Rhiannon Special”.

(link)

Previously:

Your Milkshake Would Bring All the Boys to the Yard

Off-Menu Ordering in the Mission