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earth2table:Tea Is for Terroir
March 15, 2007

So here it is, 5:00 in the morning. I’m sipping Mandarin green tea, catching up on e-mails and going over piles of to-do lists. Yes, even the dog thinks I’ve finally gone over the deep end.

There could be other reasons for my insomnia. Over the past week, I’ve attended two “cuppings,” one at a local loose-tea supplier and one at my coffee supplier. A cupping is the coffee-and-tea equivalent of a wine tasting; it’s an opportunity to evaluate various flavor profiles and understand differences among raw products. The reason for these meetings was twofold.

The first is that I wanted reacquaint myself with these vendors’ products and the people behind the products. I’ve used and tasted their goodies in the past, but it’s time to begin to nail down coffee blends for Terroir and also figure out the process I need to go through for the purchase and execution of a loose-tea service. A major part of Terroir’s mission statement is “to offer a quality-oriented dining experience within an unpretentious and comforting atmosphere and at a good perceived value.” That means that I will not sacrifice the quality of what I am presenting just to save a buck. It also means that I want to offer and show products the right way.

One example is through a user-friendly loose-tea program. This would include a list that tells you the flavor profiles and the information behind the products, making it extremely easy to choose which one to order (see list below). We’d also use teapots that steep tea correctly and allow proper tea service, but also are seamless for delivering the product to the customer.

For the coffee program, we will offer espresso-based drinks, drip coffee and press-pot coffee. Why? Not to make my service staff’s life a living hell (although I’m not ruling it out), but because we should, in order to offer the best experience to our guests.

The second reason I attended the cuppings is because I needed to do some research to continue progress on the build-out. The rough metal-stud framing is up, and the electrician is running the electrical circuits. My equipment-and-design company dropped off the equipment-specification book with all the cut sheets to my general contractor earlier in the week. This has the detailed specifications (size, electrical needs, etc.) on all equipment. Since we previously didn’t know the specific coffee equipment we were getting, I had to meet with coffee suppliers to decide which espresso machine, drip machine and various grinders we plan to use so we could get specifications on that equipment to the electrician.

Based on projected volume, number of seats and the fact I am only open for dinner (for now), I chose a single-group, manual-pull espresso machine (because it looks really cool, is cheaper than an electronic model and I believe it makes a better shot) with a sleek-yet-powerful grinder/tamper. Call it good timing, because the electrician was asking about the power requirements for the coffee station the day I can back from the cupping.

This leads me to helpful hint #42 from Uncle Stu regarding dealing with construction: Be available, accessible and visible to your general contractor and the subcontractors. Questions—let’s not call them issues—keep popping up when I arrive every day at the restaurant site. By making myself available, I’m able to make a decision right then and there, thus avoiding delays to the construction process. It also allows me to understand exactly where things are going and how they are built. Fun, profitable and educational--who could ask for more?

Cheers!

Stu

Posted by Stu Stein on March 15, 2007 | Comments (0)