Daniel's World of Coffee

Hey, That's My Latte!

Longtime coffee expert and überblogger Tonx took some pictures many years ago of lattes made at Victrola Coffee in Seattle, where I used to work. He put the set on flickr and it has over half a million views. In fact, he made these pictures available on the web even before they were put on flickr.

Many, many more beautiful lattes have been poured (though rarely have they been as well-photographed); but because these pictures were some of the first high-resolution pictures of really excellent latte art that were freely available on the web, they quickly spread all over the place. Now, as is so often the case with internet property, they're completely out of tonx's control; he told me he long ago gave up trying to get credit for all these pictures.

Anyway, a lot of those lattes are mine, and though I'm used to seeing them pop up randomly, sometimes it still takes me by surprise.

With the new Google insta-search that debuted this week (in which it starts showing you results before you have even finished typing... try it!), even if you aren't looking for images, if you type "latte ...", before you even get to the a in "art" a bunch of pictures pop up, and at least as of this week, the one in the upper right is my latte. Kinda weird; it links to some auto-bot sight called thatsweird (dot) net (no linkage for them!).

Bing.com takes you to this page in which one of my lattes is used as an interstitial illustration meant to encourage you. "Latte Art is all the new craze, and looks great," it says, "go on, have a go..."

Lifehacker has this pic, which is my favorite:

But, God bless them, they give tonx credit.

It's been a while since I jumped behind the bar and made two hundred lattes in a morning. I know I still have the chops, but I wonder if my "handwriting" has changed at all. Have you ever looked at old notebooks or letters or schoolwork and marveled at how your handwriting has changed over the years? I wonder if it's the same with latte art.

Check out my own flickr page. I have some latte art pics there, but the nicest photo sets are the ones from Ethiopia, El Salvador, and Peru.

Colorful Coffee Photos of Ethiopia... and Latte Art

I just uploaded over 180 high-resolution, colorful photos from my most recent trip to Ethiopia. You can see the batch on < ahre="http://www.flickr.com/photos/7591145@N02/sets/72157623133036298/" target='_new'>my flickr page.

Also a few fun latte art pics here, since that's always a crowd pleaser.

Hope you had a great holiday weekend! See you in the morning for more great coffee.

Charlie Brown Latte Art

Happy New Year everybody! Peep my wonky latte art style in this video. I wouldn't change it if I could (which I can't). Variety is the spice of life.

Watch my twitter feed for a pretty unique opportunity in the next 48 hours... if you've ever wanted to go to Ethiopia...

Coffee Shop: Fuel on Montlake

While I am in Seattle, I thought it would be fun to explore some new coffee shops and blog about it here. I'll still be hitting up my old favorites, but I've mentioned them on here before. Instead I'm going to mention places that are new, new to me, or just really interesting.

Tuesday, for instance, I was at Victrola on 15th, which is my old tamping grounds. That beautiful old Synesso is still in there (first one ever in a coffee shop... I remember the day they installed it... serial number #0002). I had a lovely cappuccino and ran into some old friends. In fact, I saw fellow erstwhile Brooklynite Liz Clayton fresh on her return from the Nordic Barista Cup in Iceland. She's in town for Coffee Fest, which is this weekend. Also happening this weekend, FYI, is a Seattle VS Los Angeles latte art competition being held by Victrola at their Pike Street location. 10 Seattle baristas against 10 LA baristas, with booze and music to follow. Apparently it's predicted to be a rager and they are planning for hundreds of people to be there..

But! It being a positively glorious late-summer Seattle day (78 degrees, no humidity, not a cloud in the sky, green trees everywhere and a light breeze off the Sound), I decided to take a long walk. My trek took me down 23rd Avenue to Montlake, where I happened upon a store that was new to me.

Fuel Coffee opened up not too far from Victrola, on 19th Avenue, a few years back. That first store was a nice place, with a pretty small footprint. Well, the newer store on 23rd is a lot bigger. [There is now also a third location in Wallingford.] It has a nice big, open floor plan which is very inviting. When I stopped by, six or seven young women in business casual wear were sitting around a table laughing and drinking their coffee, while several other patrons sat scattered throughout the place. Out front was the requisite Seattle bearded guy poking at his iPhone.

Barista Laura answered my several questions about the place with friendliness and aplomb. They have a very beautiful shiny black La Marzocco given pride of place right in the middle of their nice, long countertop. In general, I was impressed with the visual flow of the place, the easy-going and yet coherent feel. It's one of the hardest things to get right about a coffee shop. Couple that with good service and you've got a winning combination.

Oh, the coffee, you ask? I had a pretty good cup of the house blend, drip style, that Laura served me. Fuel's coffee is roasted by longtime Seattle bean people, Caffé Vita. My cup was sweet, mellow, and fairly drinkable, with low acidity. I'm ashamed to admit that I didn't do my normal "Cappuccino, espresso, cup of drip, etc. etc. routine" because it was late in the day, I'd already had several cups at Victrola, and I hadn't even been planning on visiting Fuel at all. But it was good coffee.

Now that I know I like the place, I plan on going back. If you are in that neighborhood of Seattle, I highly recommend checking it out.

Today Show

I had a lot of fun at Rockefeller Center taping this segment for the Today Show yesterday. It aired today and I have to say it turned out better than I thought it would. Of course 3 and a half minutes is too short, but that's the nature of TV, I suppose. You'll see how it cuts off at the end right before I pour the latte. Which is ok, because it wasn't exactly the greatest latte I had ever made.

Anyway, for what it's worth, here's me on the Today Show... enjoy!

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

Latte Art Zoo

I just taught a latte art class at Intelly-NYC on Saturday.

We didn't get to zoo animals, though!