We’re Back, Baby.

Coffee Straws is back up and running.  We have a new format, one which we really think will allow us to not only reach out to you more and give you more information about restaurants and what the CS team is up to, but also allow us  to update more frequently.  We have tailored CS more to the CS team and the way we write.  CSMale loves writing longer reviews and does a great job at it…CSFemale, on the other hand, can never sit in once place long enough to write a review, and so, as a result, we’re integrating a lighter, but just as informative, way of talking about food and everything we love about it.

As for the CS team…we are currently based in Washington DC and NYC.  Even though the focus of CS has shifted East, but we will still review and discuss anything we come across anywhere in the country.

Thanks for checking back in with us and we hope you add us to your Google Readers, Tweet-thingies, Facebook…whatever you hip young kids are doing these days, find us on them!

- WashDCGirl and Huysmans, CS Team

What’s next for Clover?

Perhaps the best first post for Coffee Straws is one that deals with the culture of coffee. As such I would like to discuss some recent developments with the Clover Machine. Back before this blog existed I wrote a post for the now deceased Literature’s Next Frontier that responded to a New York Times article detailing the Clover Machine and one other from Japan that was nearly double the price. Now without the price being disclosed here, a doubling might not sound like so much but here is the kicker… the Clover costs around $11,000 meaning the Japanese version, the Siphon Machine costs around $20,000. So what we are dealing with here are coffee makers that rival new cars.

The reason I bring the Clover Machine up now is that a few weeks back it announced its merger with (or rather its take over by) the Starbucks Coffee Company. The announcement on their website suggests that with Starbucks the original idea of the Clover Machine can be brought to a larger audience. The Clover inspires the idea of coffee as an eloquent drink once again. In its precision and style, the machine manages to produces a near perfect (only because perfection is arguably impossible) cup of coffee that should never be consumed with the aid of milk and sugar. This rediscovery of coffee as an eloquent drink helps elevate it to the level of the now extremely popular espresso drinks. But will that elevation continue under the guidance of Starbucks?

Starbucks in it of itself deserves a whole section of posts as it at best has extremely mixed and polarizing reviews from the coffee community. There are those that swear by the taste and culture of Starbucks and there are those who believe it has destroyed cafe culture. It is obvious to see what these two camps will conclude when looking at the Clover, but what about the coffee culture at large? Will we benefit from Starbucks’s takeover? With such a financial powerhouse behind the manufacturing of the machine, its technology can be mainstreamed and thus made cheaper for a broader market, but at the same time the essential elements of the machine might be lost in this mainstreaming and the coffee produced may not fit the same bill.

So we are left with the question: Cheaper and more accessible or expensive and sophisticated? Now that is one problem, a second and arguably more important problem is the loss of aura when the small company Clover becomes part of the Starbucks empire.

Thus let us engage the question: What is next for Clover?