Coffee - home-brewed

Aficianados will tell you that drinking Santa Lucia Coffee is like drinking wine. Certainly a good many Washington chefs agree, picking its beans for the coffee they serve in restaurants like Ceiba, Bistro Bis and Brasserie Beck. Coffees, ordered on line, travel straight from plantations in Nicaragua and Central America to your cup. The beans are all Rainforest Alliance Certified, shade-grown, hand-picked and sorted high-mountain Arabica beans. The different roasts define the different tastes. They're a local company, at 615 Lofstrand Ln, Rockville,240 483 4118.

Central Coffee Roasters is another. Owners Kenny and Margaret Rogers would like you to be entirely sure you know when your beans were roasted. So they stamp the Ethiopian Yirgacheffe, Jamaican Mountain Blue, and Panama Berlina they roast with the date of the Wednesday or Saturday they did it. Buy it from 11755 Lee Hwy, Sperryville, 877 594 1006.  They will mail orders to you.

Other beans worth considering for home brewing are roasted by Wilkins, a Capitol Heights company that began roasting quality coffee decades before the spread of Seattle coffee houses. Call 301 350 9600 for local stockists.

Green and roasted Ethiopian coffee beans are stocked by Merkado Market, 2116 18th St NW, 202 483 9499.

Despite the purist view that ready-ground coffee is not worth buying, there are a number of makes commonly found in cans in supermarkets, sometimes in the 'International' aisle, that produce an excellent espresso-style flavor of coffee.

The French like chicory in their coffee. For an authentic taste of French cafe au lait, try the tangerine tin of ground Cafe du Monde, available from many supermarkets and ethnic delicatessens. A sister at The Four Sisters restaurant in the Eden Center says this New Orleans coffee is the brand they swear by. along with other Vietnamese restaurants who use it for their iced ka-fe, that sublime drink of strong coffee poured over ice in a glass onto a tablespoon of condensed milk then stirred and sipped through a straw. 

Del Oro is the most commonly available, but worth seeking out because they are far cheaper in price and just as good are Cafe Goya, Cafe Pilon, Cafe Tecapa, El Coqui and El Caporal.

The closest to European-strength coffee I've found yet is the range called Torrefazione in a white vacuum-sealed pack at the Safeway in Georgetown. The coffee bar chain with outlets on every street corner sells capuccinos and espressos that lack the deep flavor of the original Italian drinks and call out for that 'extra shot' money-making order.

For more pungently European espressos and cappuccinos, seek out a branch of the smaller chain, Quartermaine's for a good strong java and excellent beans.

Or go to Cafe Cafe at 4224 Fessenden St NW, 202 237-8989. Under its previous management, it was picked by Bon Appetit magazine as their favorite coffee house nationwide and it still has the relaxed, familiar atmosphere of a student campus hang-out. It also sells an interesting range of beans, loose teas and herbal teas for home brewing.

Swing is another source that brews coffee with flavor and punch, with their own roasters in Alexandria for almost a century. It also sells beans by the pound and is a source of the elixir of coffees, Jamaican Blue Mountain, at $40 a pound! Cheaper are coffees from Ethiopia, pure Arabica and some interesting blends. The daily coffee is taken from their long list. They're at 1702 G St NW, 202 628 7601. 

Related Ingredients...

Breakfasts - Irish, French, Vietnamese
Coffee