BajaNomad

Caffe Sospeso: Third-Wave Coffee Comes to Tijuana, No Sugar, No Milk

Gypsy Jan - 7-11-2013 at 02:10 PM

From The OC Weekly

By Dave Lieberman

"As a general rule, coffee in Baja is a disappointment.

I don't mean the actual plants or the seeds that come from them; there's some truly amazing coffee coming out of states from San Luis Potosí all the way south to Chiapas.

No, I mean that by and large, finding a good cup of coffee in Baja is just about impossible, because there's not really a coffee culture. Coffee is really only drunk in the morning, and is doctored up with spices, sugar and milk to make a delicious but completely unrelated drink called café de la olla, and still has to compete with things like te de canela and atole.

Finding my morning joe in Tijuana, then, has meant I have to go to Starbucks, until I discovered Das Cortez, which serves up the Italian coffees of my youth. They don't make filtered coffee, though, since they're an espresso bar, and sometimes I just want a cup of black coffee. What is an undercaffeinated, itinerant estadounidense to do?

Imagine my surprise, then, when I made a desperate turn to escape the ridiculous traffic that ensues during Tijuana's Ciclovía car-free days, which shut down Paseo de los Héroes, and found myself in front of a third-wave coffee shop saying (in English), "No milk, no sugar." I walked into a beautiful, warmly decorated coffee bar staffed by two eager people who took ten minutes out of their day to explain to me their philosophy of coffee. Caffe Sospeso--which takes its name from the Neapolitan pay-it-forward tradition of "suspended coffee", where you pay for two coffees but only drink one, so that someone down on his or her luck can have a free coffee later--has been in Tijuana for 18 years, but has concentrated lately on changing the coffee culture on the south side of la línea.

If you've ever had Portola, Intelligentsia, Blue Bottle, etc., you'll know the spiel: lighter roasts, extremely technical extraction via methods like pourover (though Sospeso still specializes in French presses as well, which emulsify the coffee's natural oil so it's actually a thicker drink). The coffee I chose--Peruvian--was excellent. I had an espresso, too, and it was as good as any in Italy. And unlike some U.S. third-wave coffee shops, this was all delivered without any trace of hipster attitude or sniffy judgment. (Don't get me wrong; they still don't have sugar or milk--they're just not snotty about it.)

The only thing missing from the experience was Mexican coffee beans; I'd love to see the excellent beans from Chiapas and Oaxaca (and elsewhere) get the third-wave treatment, to really open up their outstanding floral qualities."

Caffe Sospeso is at Joaquín Clausell 10342, one block east of the intersection of Sánchez Taboada and Cuauhtémoc (the free road to Ensenada), across from Cablemás. They are open Mon.-Tue. 7 a.m.-9 p.m., Wed.-Fri. 7 a.m.-10 p.m., Sat. 8:30 a.m.-9 p.m., Sun. noon-6 p.m. The website is caffesospeso.com; the telephone number is 011-52-664-634-31-84.

xolotl_tj - 7-26-2013 at 01:54 PM

I had a coffee at Sospeso once. It was pretentious and flavorless. The barista was dogmatic and clueless. But maybe that was just a fluke: in this post-Starbucks world, it's hard to tell.

mtgoat666 - 7-26-2013 at 02:13 PM

what is third wave coffee?
is there a fourth wave? what happened to the second wave?

Udo - 7-26-2013 at 02:36 PM

I've never had a Sospeso, but I have had some Chiapas-grown coffee. I used to buy it in green beans and roasted it myself in large coffee roasting tumbler. In some ways the roasting thing was a pain because of the learning curve of when to stop roasting.
But the coffee that came out (when roasted right) was really outstanding!

Since the house burned down, I never got back into the roasting thing. The roaster I used was about the size of a large toaster oven that sits on the counter. After about 8 years of roasting and grinding, and knowing we were going to move to Baja one day soon, the green coffee beans were going to be non-existent, I was not sorry to see the roaster go down in flames. I still buy mostly Costa Rican beans and grind them myself. It is such a huge difference when you grind your own beans. I'll buy Chiapas beans when available. The wholesalers I bought beans from, limited the quantities one could buy on some specialty coffees. So I had to ration the really good beans and pace myself.

Curt63 - 7-26-2013 at 03:26 PM

BajaBeans (Canadian owned and operated) in Pescadero is pretty darn good.

Kalypso - 7-26-2013 at 07:27 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by xolotl_tj
I had a coffee at Sospeso once. It was pretentious and flavorless. The barista was dogmatic and clueless. But maybe that was just a fluke: in this post-Starbucks world, it's hard to tell.


Wow, did we have coffee in the same place?!?!???

I've been there a few times and each time the barista (at the counter, not the table waiters) was very, very knowledgeable about the beans they had on hand and which brewing method they use would work best for each bean. They weren't too keen on blending beans, preferring the consumer really taste the traits and characteristics of single varietal beans rather than a mash-up of competing flavors.

I'm partial to the coffee beans from the region around Coatepec, Veracruz. One barista at Sospeso didn't think much of beans from Veracruz, but that was his problem, not mine. I like what I like and I'm secure in my preference ;)

xolotl_tj - 9-4-2013 at 05:58 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by Kalypso
Wow, did we have coffee in the same place?!?!???

Sánchez Taboada behind the Cablemás office?
Quote:
which brewing method they use would work best for each bean. They weren't too keen on blending beans, preferring the consumer really taste the traits and characteristics of single varietal beans

Doesn't that strike you as ever so slightly pretentious? Different brewing methods for Caffea arabica as dictated by geography? Not keen on blending in spite of what the Burgundy and Bordeaux regions have taught us? Referring to coffee beans as varietal?! (That's a botanical distinction, not a geographical one.) I bet the barista even pronounces it "var-ee-et-taaaaal".

Jeez, it's just coffee. The simpler the better. So yes we must have been to the same Sospeso.

I like my coffee black, no fluff. And I recently ran across a good place in northern Rosarito for that ... don't remember its name, west side of the boulevard just south of Ortega's.

dasubergeek - 9-5-2013 at 09:37 AM

Hi. I wrote the linked article.

Some people don't get the idea of "third-wave" (meaning carefully sourced and very meticulously prepared) coffee. It's like the people who don't get why anyone would pay $7 for a craft beer when you can have TKT for $2, or why you would spend hundreds of dollars on a bottle of wine when the red stuff from the grocery store still tastes like wine.

That's fine. Third-wave coffee shops are like visions of Hell for people who just want a cup of coffee (and while I love great coffee, when it comes down to it, I will drink straight from the spicket at Oxxo if it means I get caffeine). Waiting on line to order a $4 cup of black Joe?

I get it. But then the solution is for you to not patronise places like this.

I liked Sospeso so much because they weren't so dogmatic and irritating about it. There are places up NOB that bring this new-wave coffee to an incredibly pretentious, lecturing, arrogant level. There's one particular place near downtown Los Angeles where I want to smack the hipster mustaches off their behatted heads for the attitude.

But Sospeso's not like that. If that sort of "craft coffee" isn't your thing, more power to you—you get your caffeine high more cheaply. But I'm glad it's there for the choice, even if I do usually go to Das Cortez for my first shot of the day (because they don't care if I add sugar to it).

bajaguy - 9-5-2013 at 09:47 AM

For wine, I don't need to spend $100 a bottle, I drink what I like, which is currently a red, 49 peso per bottle, of LA Cetto.

For beer, we make our own.

For coffee, 7-11 works for me......."designer" coffee is highly over hyped and over rated
Quote:
Originally posted by dasubergeek
Some people don't get the idea of why you would spend hundreds of dollars on a bottle of wine when the red stuff from the grocery store still tastes like wine.

Bob and Susan - 9-5-2013 at 10:40 AM

fouth wave...elephant poop coffee...500 pesos a cup!!!

ele2.jpg - 42kB

Coffee

J.P. - 9-5-2013 at 12:53 PM

There is nothing like the aroma of fresh ground coffee.
We buy our beans at the Coffee Hut in Ensenada.
we have a Cuisinart Pot that grinds the beans and then brews.
I experience that fresh ground aroma every cup.

Fred - 9-5-2013 at 03:41 PM

J.P. I shop at the same place. Kilo is around 135 pesos. Beans or the will grind it for you.

J.P. - 9-5-2013 at 03:57 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by Fred
J.P. I shop at the same place. Kilo is around 135 pesos. Beans or the will grind it for you.








I have shopped there for over 10 years. we usually get the house blend beans.

Kalypso - 9-29-2013 at 03:55 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by xolotl_tj
Quote:
Originally posted by Kalypso
Wow, did we have coffee in the same place?!?!???

Sánchez Taboada behind the Cablemás office?
Quote:
which brewing method they use would work best for each bean. They weren't too keen on blending beans, preferring the consumer really taste the traits and characteristics of single varietal beans

Doesn't that strike you as ever so slightly pretentious? Different brewing methods for Caffea arabica as dictated by geography? Not keen on blending in spite of what the Burgundy and Bordeaux regions have taught us? Referring to coffee beans as varietal?! (That's a botanical distinction, not a geographical one.) I bet the barista even pronounces it "var-ee-et-taaaaal".

Jeez, it's just coffee. The simpler the better. So yes we must have been to the same Sospeso.

I like my coffee black, no fluff. And I recently ran across a good place in northern Rosarito for that ... don't remember its name, west side of the boulevard just south of Ortega's.


Actually, I drink my coffee black as well. I got over all those frou-frou coffee drinks ages ago.

I guess it's all in how you look at it. I lived in the Bay Area for 10+ years where everything that was anything was "artesenal" or "craft" long before it was a foodie trend.

I'm still employed NOB and happen to operate 8 coffee outlets that are part of Starbucks We Proudly Brew program (which pretty much means we do almost everything they do, but they hold back some of their newer products and drinks). The big green machine from Seattle has changed their approach and have gotten back to focusing on their core product...coffee. Yeah, it's still way over-roasted, but it's more about the service now and ambiance and less about the drink. Heck they aren't even pulling shots at most of their stores, they're using their proprietary push button machine. But, I digress...

I spend a lot of time around coffee, whether it's good or bad is moot. After the foodie pretension of the Bay Area (and some parts of SoCal) I didn't find the baristas at Sospeso all that precious or pretentious. I thought they were knowledgeable and passionate about the beans in a low-key, this is what I do kinda way. Sounds like your mileage varied. :yes: