Choco-choco-latte!

Hey, I have just accidentaly  invented the drink that will keep me company through the long, dark and cold winter nights. The drink which will shush away sinister thoughts and moments of despair that will def be cue...
It is hot chocolate. Wait, wait, wait, not so easy!
Hot chocolate, made out of real cocoa and soya milk, with some dusting sugar, good pinch of cinnamon and nutmeg - so warming, so delicious, so Christmassy! The kind that won't be sold in Starbucks, i am afraid, the one that you will crawl home for after wasting your time waiting for your friends around Cambridge Circus, freezing on a bitter wind, pathetically overdressed and overdone, thinking that innocent girly giggles are aimed at you, and then deciding not to wait anymore, enough, I have pride, climb on the bus, too full with tired drunkards, hugging you with their absinthe breaths, only to receive a call that you missed them by a minute.
oh, sweetest sweetest regret! oh, teasing approximation of fun and joy! But once you have reached your home and stove and mixed that heavenly concoction - it becomes immediately clear that you have made the only right choice - spicy cocoa and Bonjour, tristesse!  
  

VIA - my saviour

I was so happy that we called in Starbucks at Paddington station! Not just we got great drinks, but I also took my weekly partner mark-out and this time it was pack of VIA Italian Roast - that was very wise decision. As we got to the campsite it was clear that there were no decent coffee on offer - maybe some vending machine produced liquid remotely resembling my favourite brew, but for coffee aficionados it remains assault to the tastes. With VIA, however, I had a luxury of having great coffee in the morning, after being awakened by the ocean's gentle roar, and standing on the top of the cliff watching waves and feeling all too happy for the words. 

standing on the cliff, feeling salty breeze on my face...

Riding the waves

I really envy people who celebrate their Birthdays with a big bash - think Kate Moss's usual 24 hour marathon of drinking and having a jolly good time, which later will re-appear on style pages of big fashion magazines teaching us how to dress for occasion with similar flair but on a shoe-string budget.
I never really had any Birthday Parties, but last few years I have just getting away with my other half to the places where I have always dreamt of visiting - Iceland, Paris... And actually not celebrating it, makes it kind of not happen, as if Time is not ticking at all and I will be eternally young and wild. (Sometimes I have difficulty remembering how old I am). Of course, it is only illusion and I am cruelly reminded about it every time I present my passport to a tired airport attendant...
Anyway, this time we went away for my husbands birthday. It was beyond amazing. We toyed with the idea of going to Greece, then Spain, then South of France, eventually settling for our very own gem in South West England - Cornwall. Newquay felt like a place to be with its thriving surf culture and busy club scene.
When we exited train, it looked like Miami to me, someone who never has been to Miami: palms, sunshine, slender girls with deep caramel tan in light sundresses, with numerous bracelets dangling from their fragile wrists, and guys with blond curly mops of hair in wetsuits carrying their trusted old long-boards to the beach.

Beach.... Oh, bliss... To wake up to the sound of ocean and just sit on the golden sand for hours in the end, just watching waves gently lapping and admire the power and might of Nature. It wasn't hot enough to long for a dip, but I still managed to swim in OCEAN! just for two minutes (it was flipping freezing), but I did it!
The coastal walks were rad as well - when you walk for 2 hours without meeting anyone apart from seagulls and odd rabbit rushing across the path. And it is just so uplifting!
PS. And I can't believe that I sold so quickly to this whole notion of surfing lifestyle - going to the beach everyday, hang out with dudes, wear pastel hoodies with abstract patterns and jean shorts... In Beach Hut Shop I bought my first copy of Cooler Mag, which is made for teenage girls, and read it to the state that the pages are falling out and some of them are a bit blurry from turning them too often and studying the content too hard.  I am dreaming of Billabong and Roxy.. Is it normal?  
  
       

Aroma Lab

I did Aroma Lab on Friday 19th of June. In advance, hand painted the poster, planned how I was going to shred  tender basil leaves to prove that Sumatra really smells of basil and other herbs. Offered one of the best coffees we have right know - Tanzania, seasonal coffee, available only limited period of time, which is unbeatable crowd-pleaser - elegant, medium bodied, with refreshing citrus-y notes.

The effectiveness of the poster was rather low and didn't generate any extra customer flow, but I still managed to have few meaningful conversations and profound tastings. Especially, I was thrilled to meet a couple from Colombia, people, who know a lot about coffee and share my passion. They have been to the coffee farms many times and the gentleman even worked there. It was very nice to find a like-minded person. This is what I like most - Conversation with the fellow human beings, something worth cherishing and savouring.

The photographs are courtesy of Irina, dear friend of mine, who did very well catching me with one of the most unexpected guests.

Fernandez and Wells

On Thursday as a part of Regional Coffee Meeting we went to check out our competitors. To be honest, when I saw agenda I thought that we would go to Costa or Nero or maybe Pret, because they are our competition. But we went to the indie coffee shops.
In my opinion, indie coffee shops we can't really compete with them. And them with us. Because obviously the volume of the business is very different , the feel, the products etc. However, the visit was great. Our group went to Fernandez and Wells on Beak street. I have read about this coffee shop before on thisisnaive.com , a lovely blog on lifestyle and beautiful things. I was very curious and was going to visit it anyway. It was a nice surprise that Charlotte took us there.
I loved the casual, easy feel of the place. Simple painted white wooden panels, rustic furniture, squeaky wooden floors. There are few places like this in Soho and plenty in Berlin. It appears "cheap", as if knocked out from the junk that was gathering dust in the Dad's loft, different mugs, vases with flowers, old-fashioned chairs... But I just know for sure, this is very well thought through strategy, million tiny design decisions resulting in you, consumer, nostalgia-ing about your granny's cottage and tea with scones and jam. Coming back to your roots. To nature. To simple unpretentious living. And you want to bring your girlfriend there. Ideally, sporting a pretty dress with daisies all over it. Sigh. It is just so GREAT.
Anyway, the beans they are using are a bit dodgy. I drunk my espresso, forcing myself. It was a bit harsh, very sour and our collective opinion is that they put some robusta in it. Our coffee is def better, but they have their washed-out white walls, and have time to steam the milk properly.

   

Paris, je t'aime!

The other day, as early as three o'clock in the morning, I woke up and in fifth time tried to upload my freshly edited video about our trip to Paris and and succeeded, I was just ecstatic!  Amount of time I spent, trying and failing to comprehend all the abbreviations, numbers and extensions of video exporting, is just unjustifiable!

But with the help of a very good friend Alex, I eventually managed and feel AWFULLY proud of myself!

In Paris from Jeanna Mortimer on Vimeo.

Run for Kids

What possibly would bait you out of the bed on early (and I mean early, like, 6 in the morning) on Sunday after a    long week at work? Let's face it - there are not many things in life that can compete with weekend lay-in. However, one of them definitely can. Contribution. Doing something that can be useful and important to people.
This is how District Coffee Masters of Central Region decided to spend their Sunday morning, taking part in Run for Kids in Battersea Park. This event was organized by Great Ormond Street Hospital and we got involved through Gavin, one of the District Managers, who has a long relationship with the Hospital, having helped them to organize their Christmas parties for the patients. Few weeks ago, during Regional Coffee Meeting, he suggested to take part in the event, maybe, not to run, but to promote it with our customers and on the day, to have tent put up and to serve coffee and tea to the participants and spectators.
We thought it was great idea and today went very well. It was fun and relaxing day, Battersea Park is just amazing, very green, with boating lake, sports pitches and zoo. We had lots of laughs and raised quite a lot of cash. Our reputation of rather expensive establishment helped - people came to the tent with some notes or change ready, but since we did refreshments for free, some of this money went straight into the collection box. Within an hour, we had to force coinage into the box, it was dead full. All and all, I really enjoyed it and filmed, of course. Micromovie comes to this blog later. Watch this space!

Some people just walked...

Aiste promoting VIA

Our gazebo was quite popular with the folks!

Coffee with cardamom

It is such a glorious summer morning outside, and I am off work and this kind of morning just calls for wasting one's time laying on the grass in the park and listening to the birds, melting into the grass, reading some profound book which just doesn't make any sense but is still pleasant to read thanks to enchanting combination of vowels and consonants and mesmerising rhythms.
Well, for a start, I just brewed myself a cup of coffee. How original! However, it is not your usual coffee I did. It is brew with the twist, with the nod to ancient cultures of Middle East and West Asia. (Cardamom grows pretty much in the same conditions that coffee trees require; sometimes it provides some additional income for coffee farmers, however, demand for this spice is relatively low and can't alone sustain the whole family or coop. It was just the matter of time, that folks would start mixing these two. Some people also get kicks adding cardamom into chocolate. Bless them!)
So, Coffee with cardamom! I have to say, I did it wrong! Checking the cyberspace for some info AFTER preparing the coffee was a bit short-sighted. I brewed coffee with far too many cardamom pods (about 8 for a cup!), which I didn't ground - just whacked them in the caffetier. But still it tasted WOW! It tasted new. Exciting! With very strong cardamom flavour, to be fair my concoction should be called Cardamom with coffee, not the other way round.
They also say cardamom is very powerful aphrodisiac. Spicy!
Try it for yourself - couple of ground pods for a cup would be enough to add some fragrance and flavour without overpowering coffee itself. Have a happy tasting!

Flat White Making

Perfect Flat White from Jeanna Mortimer on Vimeo.


This is little video I have made starring Aiste, our Regional Coffee Master and Serkan, my fellow District Coffee Master, making a flat white. Apologies for the sound and some commentaries(and of course, Nokia ringtone - I have a long way to go in my filmmaking, ;-) )

Gossip Girl

(Getty Images)

When I was teenager, I was obsessed with Kate Moss. I did all that your average teen would do - collected the pages with her editorials and commercials, read the articles and longed to see her in flesh. She lived in far away land and was more elusive than snow leopard. She never appeared in talk shows, gave no interviews, supported no causes to save Africa or stop the war. She was enigmatic, distant and aloof, like a real star, giving light but no warmth. 

And when I arrived to London, I was grown up enough to understand that our meeting is totally unnecessary - she is just a human being, woman who likes to party hard and doesn't give a flying monkey about what people have to say.  All her life in public eye taught her that. However, I did see her in flesh. She is pretty. 

 

The other day, our shop was graced by the brief appearance of two other celebs, whom I didn't seek to meet: Jude Law and Sienna Miller. It has long been a commonplace that two sweethearts are back together (I somehow managed to miss this life-changing news, no matter how hard tabloids tried to drive it home). They came in a quite moment on Monday, looking very casual and relaxed, did a bit of a kissing and cuddling, ordered their drinks and gone, leaving the shimmer of their aura trail in the air. 

Of course, we pretended we didn't recognise them (although, Adam who was on the till, did it genuinely). Of course, we studied them attentively from the corner of the eye - is she really that skinny? Is his tan natural? What is she wearing? etc. They also played their part, shooting quick glances around, Jude lifting his T-shirt high to show off his six pack on Sienna's remark that this Almond Croissant could make him fat and disgusting. They didn't look in the eye even when asking questions or ordering, looking at my shoulder instead.   

What I liked though, was that they ordered straight Venti Cappuccino for him and Grande Latte for her. No frills. No extra hot, half shot, quarter decaf, soya, no foam latte with two pumps of hazelnut and one pump of vanilla... 

That was the best bit. ;-)

Sumatran Delights

It has been a busy few last weeks - my Dad came to visit from Russia, I volunteered for East End Film Festival, new Summer campaign has been launched... 
I am resuming my rather non-existent blogging with the post about Starbucks latest seasonal offering - Sumatran Lake Toba and Siborong Borong. We are very lucky this time around to have not one, but two coffees. Both of the them are coming from the same region in Sumatra, however, they subtly differ. 
Yesterday during the District Meeting we had a comparative tasting of the both species.  This glorious sunny morning I decided to find out more about the country of origin. 
There is some stuff from Wikipedia:    
"Lake Toba (Indonesian: Danau Toba) is a lake and supervolcano, 100 kilometres long and 30 kilometres wide, and 505 metres at its deepest point. Located in the middle of the northern part of the Indonesian island of Sumatra. It is the largest volcanic lake in the world.^[1]In addition, it is the site of a supervolcanic eruption that occurred about 75,000 years ago, a massive climate-changing event. This is the largest known eruption anywhere on Earth in the last 25 million years. According to the Toba catastrophe theory to which some anthropologists and archeologists subscribe, it had global consequences, killing most humans then alive and creating a population bottleneck in Central Eastern Africa and India that affected the genetic inheritance of all humans today."
Wow! Pretty heady stuff, I guess one of the reasons that the Lake Toba coffee doesn't have any acidity whatsoever, in my opinion, is because  coffee trees are grown on the volcanic soil, which is very reach in minerals as oppose to products of organic decoy. 
^{This is how the experts of Dallis Coffee describe the cup:}

 Full bodied, with a smooth syrupy mouthfeel, earthy notes of tobacco, leather and spice mingle with savory green peppers and lush red fruits.

Another coffee - Sumatra Siborong Borong. Compared to Lake Toba, it is tangier with the hint of acidity and sharper herby notes. 

"The Batak people have lived in the Lake Toba area for centuries and are referred to as Toba Batak. Their faith combines Christianity and indigenous beliefs. Sumatra Siborong-Borong coffee was cultivated almost entirely by Batak people.
Batak women pick only the ripest cherries and then pulp and wash them, all by hand. The wet parchment is set out to dry in the sun on tarps or woven mats in front of their houses. This coffee is sorted by hand and delivered to mill the day after harvest to ensure freshness.

Locals brew their coffee Turkish-style—sweetened with sugar." (source - starbucks.ch)

I can easily picture this: with the backdrop of sunset - flaming orange sun and purple sky, the cafe(kedai) with few wrinkly and dark from merciless sunshine faces, who laugh and swear, play chess and sip thick syrupy coffee from tiny cups. Smoke from their clover(CLOVER, my dear Lord!) cigarettes mixes with heavy intoxicating aromas of the wet forest. Women quietly smile and knit. (Well, maybe they don't knit because they don't need to - it's constantly warm enough to wear just cotton shorts and straw hat, but I want them knit - it better suits the mood.) Couple of Sumatran cats, short haired and slender, snooze on the porch. 

Mamma Mia, heaven! Paradise! What have you done to me, Siborong Borong? 

Happy tasting, people!   

Espresso Excellence Class

Not so long ago our Regional Coffee Masters suggested to run an Espresso Excellence class as part of a regional strategy to improve the quality of the beverage. It combines some of the fundamentals of bar with tactics for winning customer service. Aiste and Charlotte did the class with us, District Coffee Masters first and then we were suppose to roll out the class with our SCMs and after that, we would do it on the regular basis with all new recruits or people who just kinda lost their bearings and needed re-focus.

Because we had to do some exercises in real cafe setting and because in my district all the shops are open 7 days a week, Zita of Victoria District suggested we went to Palmers Street store, which is closed on weekends.

It was Saturday morning and being primarily an office area, the streets around Victoria Station were dead. The trails of ducks crossed  the sky. Air was cool and crisp. Daffodils nodded their sleepy heads in unison with early breeze.
 We had a fun class and having spoken with few SCMs after that, I think, everyone enjoyed rather unusual format of the meeting. Now, I need to be pretty inventive with the agenda for the next meeting.  

 

Coffee and cigarettes

They talked. They talked about everything, anything really, and about nothing in particular. They argued, made friends, went around minding their own business. They smoked. A lot. And they drunk coffee.

This is "Coffee and cigarettes"'s very brief plot, that doesn't do this film any justice. You have to watch it. It was released about 1999 and is quite rare in the shops - too art-housey, or plain boring. Director - Jim Jarmush, and if I am not mistaken, he also wrote a script - jigsaw puzzle of unconnected events, happening around smoking and drinking coffee. It is not the action packed thriller, that keeps you glued to the screen and you'll need a lot of coffee to get through. Sometimes even, it seems like the movie is telling you: "Go on, this is your chance, switch off! Or switch to the snooker championship re-run." However, you need to persist and stick with it.

I fall in love with this movie in Moscow, it was very early morning screening in huge cinema in MDM Palace, Metro Frunzenskaya, and for me, unspoilt by the wonders of civilization girl from the industrial suburbs, the mirrored bar, the spacious foyer, the velour armchairs, shaped as balls and hugging you with their soft edges - seemed an absolut of sophistication, triumph of engineering thought.  There were, probably, about another couple of nut cases in the cinema, apart form myself and my friend Stepanka. The movie started without sound, in black and white, with Russian subtitles. All this things made a profound impression on me and I mentally prepared myself for the master-class in art-house cinema. After 15 min the operated realized that he forgot to put the sound on! Honestly, I was a bit dissappointed. Also, in Russia all the foreign language movies are dubbed with snotty monotonous voice-over of a guy, that has been smoking illegal substances for 15 years non-stop, or else he sounds like he did. We are not used to subtitles in Russia.

Anyway, I recommend everyone to see this film, it has great camera work, music score and that delicious pointlessness that marks many of Jarmush's works - just the excuse to curl up on the sofa with a huge jar of coffee.
    

St. John's Wood Re-Opening

After few weeks of painful refurbishment and being closed from the noon everyday, eventually, we arrived at the end of our journey and store was re-opened today. The transformation is amazing - the new lighter palette of the colors and indie coffee house feel.
I especially liked the new furniture - dark and classy - and big prints on the walls.
The team was wearing orange T shirts and had Aroma Lab on and some contests for customers.

 

Flat White's come back!

These days we sell a lot of flat whites, the drink that started as a whimsy is rapidly becoming very popular among  the customers - there is even a particular breed of them, asking a cappuccino or latte "like a flat white" - creamy and dreamy. It served as a pivotal point in a history of coffee making and revolutionized the way we see espresso-based beverages forever.

As the initial training went down in January there are now some new people in town who missed that - and we came up with the idea  to run the classes on regular basis. Today myself, Store Coffee Master from 34 Edgware Rd. store Emma and Malik, manager from aforementioned store did 4 classes. In. A. Row.
It was coooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooool!

We have met some brilliant people and have bags of fun.
Here are couple of pictures, unfortunately, my camera's batteries have gone and I couldn't do more.  Shame.

Happy Easter!

Great timing for the post congratulating with Easter, when Easter Monday is almost over, but as you all know - good things come to those, who wait! ;-)

I hope everyone had nice Easter and ate a lot of eggs.
I was so inspired by blossoms and about 15 consecutive minutes of sunshine, that I went and wrote few haiku. (For all the purists out there - mine are can only loosely called haiku; for those who are not familiar with this poetical genre - have a look at haikuguy.com).

Hello, sun!
Hello, sun! - little birdies
Crying.

Sun is shining.

Weather is sweet.
Guardian unopend.

Weeping willow
Dressed in green, rivels
Cherry blossoms.

Silly fun

One of my Store Coffee Masters send this link to me. I thought it was very funny and rather silly fun. The main character, girl in fishnets, called Sarah, wrote the lyrics for this masterpiece which in my opinion are brilliant and expanding the boundaries of literary excellence. She also wrote that she was obsessed with Starbucks for a while and "had a good fortune of being hired by the company". In my current situation I can only be envious of such enthusiasm.

Here it is. Watch it, dance to it, sing along!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_MZ_DU1lKEc

Paris, Paris, Paris!

Having lived in London for a while I have developed some stereotypes and prejudices which is never good, but saves a lot of time – I never trust BBC weather forecast, I don’t read Dan Brown and I don’t believe in sky without at least one tiny cloud.

However, this type of sky exists! I got a proof in Paris last week. It was just surreal – bottomless blue void and nothing to hold on to, the merciless sunshine that I thought was only possible in Jerusalem, burning the ancient remains and balding heads of the local sages.
But, my, oh my, how freezing it was! Bitter wind blew from the river, making us seek shelter in many cafes and brasseries, where we were served cafe au lait or later Americanos for me and cappuccinos for Ash, because we got corrupted by Starbuck’s cup sizes and coffee brought in egg cups wasn’t quite enough. Majority of people though stayed outside, on lined along the cafes tables and wicker chairs, sipping their espressos, smoking and lazing on the sun.

We also discovered chocolate viennoise, which is just a hot chocolate with cream. And chocolate africain from Angelina. The place looked so snob from outside that we had some doubts before entering it, but I am happy we did. It was very welcoming and stuff greeted us like their cousins returning from travels down basin of Amazonia. The cafe itself certainly looks grand with golden carvings, huge mirrors and chandelliers – it feels like Louis XVI’S palace. The sweets display is a stuff of a dream – giant jars full of macaroons of every colour imaginable – pistachio, orange, pink, black, little wonders of culinary, so sophisticated and artful that it seems a crime to eat them.
The chocolate africain was brought to us in a little milk jar with whipped cream separately, so thick and syrupy, and full of flavour, I am sure they milked the most gracious and serene cows to produce this quality cream and cracked the cocoa beans worth their weight in gold to make chocolate so delicious.

We also ordered Montblanc – desert which recipe is kept secret for over hundred years – it tasted divine but totally unusual. Only after buying a marron spread (chestnut) and trying it at home, it downed on me, that this Monblanc is simply the chectnut flavoured pastry filled with whipped cream rested on most delicate, most fragile meringue. Oops, I told you the secret!
I don’t know why we needed desert at all as the calories we consumed with hot chocolate would be enough to sustain us on our attempt to swim across the Channel. To be honest, this stuff has to be taken in moderation – it is like caviar or my beloved fois gras – after few spoonfuls it just becomes too much and you understand that this things designed to be savoured slowly and in homeopathical dozes.

Coffee was very good everywhere we went – even at the hotel where I suspect they brew the filter. Paris certainly lived up to the expectations, but also shocked with its astronomical prices. Get saving, fellas! Having said that, the best things in Paris are stil free – the smell of fresh oysters on a bed of ice displayed on a street market, insanely tasty baguettes, the regularity of Jardin de Luxemburg, the sight of the city sprawled below from the Sacre Couer’s Dome, the iron-wrought balconies and views of Eiffel Tower at dawn.

Magic instant

Here are some rather poetical pics from my recent outing "Love Ball" which was held in Roundhouse in Camden Town on 23d of February. "Love Bal" is an annual fundraising event of Naked Heart Foundation, charity founded and run by Russian supermodel Natalia Vodianova, who through her astonishingly successful career in modelling escaped poverty and miseries layed out for her. Having had married an English arisrocrat Justin Portman and earned quite few million herself, Natalia decided to bring some joy into Russian children's lives and build many playground around Russia and now UK. Her charity balls attract cream of the cream of fashion and art world and Love Ball was a very beautyful occasion indeed. (Sorry for picture quality - I did  them on wrong setting, oh well, :-()

The reason I brought the whole thing up though is that I have spent the whole day In Roundhouse and since there were no coffee machine around I had to drink some of the instant coffee provided for the crew. Now, I really can't remember when I had a cup of instant coffee last time, but when I had I knew I didn't like it. There is something very wrong with the word instant for me - it assumes that the whole ritual of preparing coffee - from the moment when aroma of just opened bag of beans fills the room to manual grinding and 4min brewing, pouring thick syropy liquid into one's favourite cup and slowly sipping it on the terrace, greeting first rays of the sun, spilling their gold on the green fields of Nairobi (dream on, kid). All this is reduced to a "instant"! What a disgrace!

And of course, when I first heard that Starbucks will be launching its brand of "instant" coffee, I felt betrayed and very sceptical. Until I tried it.
And I have to tell you, fellas

IT'S FANTASTIC!!!

It's not your french press, it does take away the joy of brewing your own, but I you happend to be somewhere far from home or Starbucks shop - it's just miracle! I can't explain the science behind this ground-breaking innovation, however, it works. The cup tastes amazing!  
Smooth and very sweet marshmellowy on the nose, it packs some punch on the taste buds - mediun bodied, with clean acidity and hint of lemon in the aftertaste - it delivers like your old Colunbia Shuttle brewed cup.
You don't believe me? Try for yourself!