Filter
Clearly not a market, but a coffee house. Still, a good coffee house in central Washington is worth its weight in beans. Washington is long on coffee shops but short on good ones. The ubiquitous Starbucks serves what my father used to crushingly refer to as GP. It stood for gnat's pee - except he used a more vulgar epithet. (It was years before I understood that this Nat was not a friend of my father's but an insect and therefore spelt with that crucial G.)
Filter has just opened. And is more a coffee bar than a coffee shop. It treats its coffee (and its teas) like wine. There's a menu on the handsome concrete counter top listing six filter coffees, from Ethiopian Sidano to Peruvian La Florida.
Owner Rasheed Jabr is down from New York where he was involved in the restaurant business for over ten years. He wanted to stay in the service part but had had enough of the demanding hours so decided to switch to wine. While he was waiting to get his foot in the door and meet importers and wholesalers, someone took him to a coffee convention and he discovered that coffee, in its variety, was not dissimilar to wine. "I realized I could have a coffee bar not unlike a wine bar." So he set about drinking his way through tastings just like the wine tastings he was familiar with. Which is how he settled upon roasters Caffee Pronto in Annapolis as his coffee suppliers.
Filter is down the garden steps of a handsome house on 20th Street, just above Dupont Circle. Jabr has clearly thought deeply about ambience. The walls are a warming bright orange, there is good music in the background and light bulbs in a row inside thick square glass shades. There arer only a few tables at which sit dedicated coffee drinkers working their internet contacts. Jabr may have been prevented by high rents from opening in Manhattan, but he's brought Manhattan to Washington in atmosphere and decor.
He's not unhappy to have left the Big Apple. "Every time I came down to visit my brother, there were only a few places I liked for coffee. But they were either over in Capitol Hill or somewhere a long way from Silver Spring where my brother lives. So I thought I'd come down and do it here."
He equally serious about tea, which he makes from loose leaf he stores in canisters behind the bar and treats as dedicatedly as he does his coffee. Only the pastries are bought in, though he may one day change that.
So how much coffee does he drink himself? He always has one on the go, he says. But it doesn't get him wired - he's so busy he rarely gets a chance to drink his mug to the dregs. And cool coffee sucks, so he pours it out once it's in any state less than perfect.
Filter, 1726 20th St NW, 202 234 5837
1 Comment
Liz Diamond
Your family and mine think alike - in my family we called bad coffee gnat's piss and that is about as vulgar as we got. It said it all.
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