Working at a restaurant bar, making espresso drinks was just pain, especially during the hellishly busy Sunday brunches. Most of the SF top coffee house cappuccinos always tasted way too bitter for me and never understood the joy of making the cup or having one, until we were in Tokyo 2010 winter.
We stayed in the neighborhood called Koenji in Tokyo and found a super great neighborhood cafe called "Coffee Amp". http://www.coffee-amp.com/ That cafe was the very first one that gave us the "correct" cappuccino we felt like. Sweetness of the espresso and steamed milk was well brought out, unlike any of the bitter burnt cups we came across in the States. "So coffee CAN have sweetness of its own and doesn't have to be bitter." It was almost like an enlightment moment we had there.
Now that I knew what a cup of correct cappuccino was supposed to taste like, it became so much more enjoyable making the coffee. I would simply try making a cup of cappuccino and taste it to see if it was any close to what Amp was serving. It's been almost a year and half since our coffee enlightment, and my cup is a lot closer to Amp's than before, minus the world championship class mastery latte art, of course.
We also did the same thing while trying out different coffee houses in SF and around to see who we wanted to partner with. All the top coffee houses were all great, but we thought Ritual Roasters was the closest to our "ideal" coffee flavor. They seemed to have a similar taste to ours, interms of the balance of the sweetness of the ingredients themselves, not to mention their very ethical business philosophy.
And our search came to an end. We will be serving Ritual Roasters coffee at our cafe. More about their fabulous wholesale program on later post!
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