Aldo Coffee Company

Acoustik Rootz Here Friday: Pittsburgh's World Music Supergroup

This should be pretty freaking cool... a little tango, a little calypso, a little flamenco and some jazz thrown in.

Acoustik Rootz has played downtown venues larger than ours a few times a few times when Dumisizwe has been in town - so it's really a treat that they'll be playing in our little Mt. Lebo. 

Acoustik Rootz is:
Julieta Ugartemendia of Tangueros de Ley on clarinet
Michael Chapman, executive director of Pittsburgh Live Music and the Guitar Society of Fine Art on guitar
Alcira Chapman, Michael's wife, on vocals
Dumisizwe Bhembe on percussion

No cover, but as always, we suggest tipping the band well if you enjoy the music - and you will (btw, $5 would be a sweet start).  Our thanks to Julieta for making this work for

Show gets underway at 8pm and ends shortly before closing.  We hope to see a full house for a night of great music.

Boys Getting Naked

When it's just the boys behind the bar, the tools come out.

We were playing with the naked portafilter today, first time in awhile.  Frank was pulling high-test, Rich pulling decaf.

For those of you reading this who are not in the business, a "naked" or "crotchless" portafilter is one where the spouts at the bottom of the portafilter have been removed, meaning that there is nothing between the basket screen and the cup.  It's a great training device to analyze tamping and distribution problems as well as something beautiful to behold when pulling a good shot because of the flow, texture and colors of the shot being pulled.

Lots of crema and a bit more fullness in mouthfeel (and a tad more sweetness) in both cases, although it seemed the sweet spot for the beautiful tiger striping on the caffeinated Black Cat was perhaps two seconds longer than what we normally pull.  (Tiger stiping on the decaf still seems out of reach).

We took a lot more photos, but all except these two were too blurry or had flash reflection.  Something we need to work on. ..

(Note to self:  Next time we take photos, make sure we wipe off the backsplash panel first!)

Food, Wine and Scotch Blogging

It's often been said that blogging has "democratized" the distribution of content.  Which is true in the broadest sense - more people have access to affordably publishing more content than at any time in history.

That also means there's a lot of content out there that's simply not worth the time to find it, let alone read it.

But, because there are so many blogs on just about every subject, there are plenty of good great ones to read up on.  The area of food and drink is especially rich with thoughtful and info-packed blogs.  Here are a few we've begun reading recently:

Wine & Scotch Blogs:
Basic Juice:  http://basicjuice.blogs.com/basicjuice/
The Wine Importer (focus is on tasting): http://www.joedressner.com/
VinoCibo (focus on Italian wines): http://www.joedressner.com/
The Scotch Blog:  http://www.thescotchblog.com/

Food Blogs:
Epicurious:  http://www.epicurious.com/features/blogs/editor
Lenn Devours (former Pittsburgher, now on Long Island): http://www.lenndevours.com/
Amateur Gourmet: http://www.amateurgourmet.com/the_amateur_gourmet/
Dessert First:  http://www.dessertfirst.typepad.com/
Cheeseaholics:  http://cheesaholics.blogs.com/
Creampuffs In Venice:  http://creampuffsinvenice.typepad.com/

Last but certainly not least, Michael Ruhlman just started a blog.  An author of several books, Michael may be most noted as the co-writer of the French Laundry Cookbook as well as one of my personal favorites, Soul of a Chef.  In foodie circles, he's better known as frequent dining companion and foil of Anthony Bourdain.  If you need an intro, there's no better post to get familiar with Michael (and Tony and others) than this one - the comments are hysterical.

While we still get the occasional copy of Cucina Italia and still love getting new cookbooks, each of the food and booze blogs mentioned above have found their way into our dining and entertaining plans.  We hope you'll enjoy them as well.

Belle the Barista Featured in JANE Magazine

OK, it's not in the print issue, just the online edition.  And in the blog section, of all places.  And they edited the interview down to just three questions.  And there's no photo as yet.

But hey, it's Belle and it's a national publication, so we're happy.

Here it is.

A Year Smarter This Halloween

Last year was our first experience with the Mt. Lebanon Halloween Parade.  At the time of last year's event we'd been open all of 10 months.  We'd had a few big days, but nothing like we saw last year.  We were completely unprepared - lines 15-20 deep, people grumbling about why we didn't have extra staff as if we should've known. 

It was our first experience of what in the food biz is called being "in the weeds."  We even had to resort to using our upstairs neighbors to hand out candy and bus tables.

This year we were ready.  Five people behind bar:  Mel on hot chocolate and tea, Belle, Lauren and Frank switching off on the Linea two-group and and Cara, who came back for this morning specifically to run point at the register, which she did so smoothly it was as if she'd never left.  Rich and Cara's daughter Natalie took turns bussing tables while Rich also got out lunch.   We were up 100 drinks/hour territory - a level rarely (if ever) seen at coffeehouses in this neck of the woods.

It's not necessarily the type of craziness we'd want to face every day, but it's great to know we've now got skilled staff able to more than competently handle this level of business.  Despite the rush, few if any customers waited more than five minutes.  Off a two-group.  That's progress.

However, there was one thing we weren't smarter about - we didn't have a camera to capture the parade or the lines of customers.  - There's always next year.

The Governor Walked Out Empty Handed

So the rumor reported yesterday was true.  State Represtative candidate Matt Smith escorted Governor Rendell around Washington Road and right into our shop where Hizzoner was kind enough to pose for a few photos with customers, and with us.  Unfortunately, we couldn't serve the Governor a coffee or cannoli, and his security staff politely declined same, allowing that they were already too wired.

Two high school girls sitting by the north window had no idea what was going on until the Governor was leaving and shook their hands.  They then asked Melanie, "Was that the Governor of Pittsburgh?"

What are they teaching in Civics these days?

Btw, we decided to be proper hosts and not push our agenda of getting an inexpensive limited wine license approved for shops like ours.  Maybe Lynn Swann will stop by soon and we can make that his issue...

What We're Cupping Today

We're doing a shorter cupping session early this afternoon.  We can only accommodate six tasters, so we're completely full for this one.  Len (Worldman of CoffeeGeek fame) and Bill (former roaster) will be joining the staff for this one.

We'll be cupping the Novo Wild Forest Tega, Intelly's New Guinea, Intelly's Organic Mexico La Perla de Oaxaca (TM), and CoffeeAM.com's Kenya AA (which we cupped last week but want a second try a few days farther off roast).

We didn't get invites out for this one.  It sort of came together impromptu.  Next time we'll plan ahead and ensure everyone on the short list gets an invite.

UPDATE:  Forgot we gave away the Kenya over the weekend... subbed some fresh Yirg for it, which made the cupping a bit more challenging since all the coffees were relatively lighter in body.  Interestingly, the Wild Forest Tega showed up with very tea-like characteristics in taste and body - and it didn't actually "crust" for us (on the plus side, no floating grounds to deal with).  Very different from the Wild Forest Telu Espresso we cupped last week - very "un-coffeelike", but not in the same lemon-tart way the Gesha CoE was - this seemed both earthy and delicate at the same time.  Dare we say it was on the edge of  perhaps having a "clean" sophisticated maté element to it?

Len took some photos which we suppose will show up at Home-Barista or CoffeeGeek.

UPDATE 2:  Len's photos came out blurry, but here's what the table looked like (sans spoons and rinsing cups), with Bill and Andi waiting for us to get started.

Rumor Has It the Guv May Stop By

We heard scuttlebutt that the Honorable Governor Edward G. Rendell will be making an appearance on Washington Road tomorrow. 

While we're not officially on the Governor's itinerary, we're assuming that the Governor will be accompanied by State Representative candidate Matt Smith, who is a regular customer.  Perhaps Matt can nudge the Guv our way.

And if he does, hopefully we can convince the Governor to have a cappuccino and cannoli on the house.  And then, once he's happily sated, we'll ask him what he plans to do about busting the state-run monopoly that is the PA Liquor Control Board, so that we might someday see reasonably-priced liquor licenses for shops like ours so we can serve wine and cordials. 

(FYI, a liquor license may be as low as $1,000 in New York... why are they $50,000 or more in PA?  Who and how many politicos are getting a piece of that action?)

Abbondanza Means New Menu Items

With today's snow we had to snip off what was left in our patio herb garden before we lost all those delicious herbs.  There will be plenty of dried sage, oregano and mint to work with in the coming months, as well as rosemary that we had dried earlier in the year (and is still extremely aromatic!)

Alas, we were left with a lot of fresh loose leaves that couldn't be bundled for drying and we didn't want to throw them out.

Solution?  Make a quiche (four cheeses - parmesan, fontina, chevre and provolone, with sweet capicola, red onion, oregano and mint).  So you'll see one in our display case for the first time Tuesday morning.  If y'all like this one, we'll do more.

We also had a cup and change of pumpkin left over from a second pumpkin tiramisu we made this afternoon.  So we used that along with some other fall favorites - maple syrup, applesauce and pecans - to make some pumpkin-maple swirl muffins.

It's fun being in the kitchen when you have an abundance of great ingredients to work with.  Which is why it always seems so sad to leave summer with its juicy tomatoes, peppers, lettuces and herbs behind. 

Ad Libbing with Monin Syrup

We have something like four dozen different syrups from Monin and Stirling behind the bar, most of which will never get used in a latte, but are there for fosfatos and cremosas - Italian sodas.

These flavors can also be used for cooking and baking in a pinch as we found out.

The pumpkin cheesecake we've been getting from Ainsley on Friday afternoon was almost gone by evening.  We needed another dessert for Saturday - and we figured it should have pumpkin. 

We had everything to make a pumpkin tiramisu on hand.  Well, almost everything.  We didn't have Grand Marnier or any other orange liquer.  But we did have a bottle of Courvoisier. 

Solution:  to 1/2 cup of Courvoisier, add two pumps Monin (or Stirling) Orange Syrup.

Worked like a charm.

And the pumpkin tiramisu sold out by mid-day Sunday, so now we need yet another pumpkin dessert.