"stumptown coffee" news and stories

• There's nothing like a good dumpling to warm you up in winter. Here are a few to try: Spinach and Ricotta Dumplings With Roasted Garlic Cream, Austrian Bacon and Chive Bread Dumplings and Chicken and Parsley Dumplings.
  
• Portland's Stumptown coffee is heading east, to open a roasting facility in Brooklyn.
• We are firmly in the midst of citrus season and lemons are the star attraction in many a grocery store display.
• Make yourself a more virtuous steak sandwich by using lean beef and omitting the cheese.
• Need help picking out a wine? Check out those tech sheets on the counter.
• Wine classes, apple juice for memory and a contest from Green and Black's chocolate are all In the Mix this week.
• Want a foreign experience without leaving home? Check out this recipe for Moroccan Spinach and Garbanzo Soup.
  
• For a quick weeknight dinner, spice up a grocery store tub of Alfredo Sauce with extra veggies and a couple chicken sausages.

Yesterday I picked "Ethiopia Sidamo" from the thermal pot at my fave local coffee shop, on a whim. I almost never go with the boring, ordinary Colombian house blend. Sometimes I'm wowed by my alternative selection, other times it's just coffee.

Color me wowed. I can't get enough of this stuff. It tastes like berries. No lie. And I'm sure you're thinking, coffee that tastes like berries? I totally passed that raspberry-flavored stuff up in the coffee aisle at my grocery store. But this is more a terroir thing (do they call it terroir in coffee?). The coffee beans, they're not that different from grapes, after all. Roasting brings out these amazingly complex and, yes, fruity flavors. According to the roaster, Stumptown Coffee, "The cup is Neopolitan ice cream... Intense chocolate, strawberry and creamy vanilla flavors in every sip." Plus it's organic and fair-trade and ohmigod I am so in love with this coffee. I wish I could give you a taste, you'd never be the same.

I went to graduate school in Philadelphia, and lived only a few blocks from the famed La Colombe Torrefaction. I was a student, it was far too hip for me - but I did stop in once or twice for a croissant and what Food & Wine Magazine calls their "silky cappuccino," naming the caffeinated hotspot the top U.S. coffee "bar."

So coffee is served at bars, not shops, now? The magazine also picks Ritual Coffee Roasters in San Francisco, Ninth Street Espresso in the East Village, New York; Aloha Island in Beverly Hills and Ruta Maya in Austin. Naturally I think they're ignoring some legendary spots here in Portland (hello, aren't we coffeeville?), like Stumptown Coffee and Ristretto Roasters.

As I've only quaffed java at one of their top five spots, though, I can hardly be a judge. What do you all think: are they missing anyplace else that's truly paradise in a French Press?