Coffee and Book Reviews - Coffee Geography

Coffee and Book Reviews is a blogizine exploring coffee and books.

Coffeehouse Music
Lucy Kaplansky/Ten Year Night

Thought-provoking coffeehouse music. Throw this in the CD player and you can almost hear the coffee cups clanking (melodiously).

Modern Folk Music

Quirks of Coffee Geography: California, the Caribbean, or Venice?

Caribbean Coffee in Santa Barbara? Venetian coffee in Silicon Valley? Yeah, baby, you bet. Coffee is international, and bean origins, roasting methods, and production locales collide to create delightfully quixotic combinations.

If you're lucky in Santa Barbara, California, you may stumble into an independant cafe and find whole bean Caribbean Coffee for sale on the shelves. Caribbean Coffee Company is a specialty coffee roaster located in Santa Barbara, California, and the coffee they produce is truly exceptional. You can also order it from their website, which we do. The real danger with coffee this good, however, is that you'll zoom past 1-2 cups a day up to 5 or 6, just because it tastes that spectacular, so beware.

The gem from Caribbean Coffee Company is their Habana Roast (and this is the one that got us into the most trouble with doubling up our cups). This Cuban-style coffee is undoubtably the best in America outside of Miami.

Drive 300 miles north on California's Hwy 101 and exit onto Unversity Avenue in Palo Alto, California, and you can perambulate (walk) into a Venetian coffee bar, Caffe del Doge. Yes, served right in California's Silicon Valley you'll find coffee roasted and blended in Venice, Italy.

Don't let the English translation of their Italian website fool you, Caffe del Doge's California location is in Palo Alto, not San Francisco. Though we'll give the translators a break—compared to other side of the Atlantic Palo Alto and San Francisco are practically the same geographic location. (Just don't mention that to anyone during rush hour traffic between Palo Alto and San Francisco.)

But we digress. What's important here are the specialty coffee drinks. You can get espresso shaken with ice and then decanted and topped with decadent real whipped cream and chocolate sauce, or a hot chocolate-hazelnut lined martini glass filled with espresso, powdered chocolate, milk froth and chopped hazelnuts. And from 5-8pm most nights they have an Italian happy hour where you can begin your evening with a fruit and Prosecco spritzer. Another bonus here is its proximity to Stanford University. With the population of international students and faculty you're likely to hear three or four different languages spoken on any given day, and especially in the evenings. If you're in the area, drop by.

Eco-Friendly Upgrade for Coffee To Go

Finally, there is an eco-friendly solution to coffee jackets, Cup Couture. You can keep one of these fabric cup sleeves in your purse (or pocket) and reuse it instead of throwing away a cardboard coffee jacket each time you buy coffee to go.

And yes, you can be eco-macho: they have designs for the men. With names like "Oh James!" and "License to Latte," every coffee-drinking man on the run can have fun with his morning cup of piping-hot social consciousness.