BOSTON: DAY 2

Part of the reason why you're not going to see a lot of food places on this recent trip to Boston is that we went to a lot of our old favorites that I blogged about when I lived in Boston - India Quality, Clear Flour Bakery, Shabu Zen, etc. But I did manage to try a couple of new places. First up, the Natural Bean Coffee Company.

As Leah and I wandered down Newbury Street in the pouring rain, we spotted this new coffee place and decided to check it out. (Uhm, did I mention the large sign outside offering free coffee? And did I mention the pouring rain?) We stepped into this basement space to find a very hip, modern coffee shop. And their whole thing is to have organic, natural coffee, and compostable cups, and stuff like that. We both ordered free coffees and took them to the tiny seating area in the back to enjoy it.

The seating area only holds 3 tables, but it's quiet and was a nice place to take a break from the rain. Of course, all the compostable utensils, the bins to separate compost, recycling and trash - they're all things we see on a routine basis in the Bay Area. But I guess it's new to Boston, and if it encourages other businesses to do the same thing, I think that'd be great.

My second new food experience took place later that night. It seems that a Bon Chon Chicken has opened in Boston. Or rather, they're selling Bon Chon chicken at a lounge in Brighton. For those of you who don't know, Bon Chon Chicken is a Korean fried chicken chain with locations in NY. I'd heard of their chicken before, but never tried it. Of course, my friends had already tried it and were raving about it. So despite having stuffed ourselves on shabu, they insisted on order a take out order to chicken just so we could try it.

We ended up taking the chicken over to the Super 88 food court, cause there was seating there. The packaging was quite fancy:

And here's the chicken. It really was pretty good. Crunchy, sweet, a littly spicy. I definitely saw the appeal. And I liked the little tub on pickled daikon that it came with. I think I ate more of that than the chicken.

So we had additional good eating experiences in Boston and I look forward to having more Bon Chon chicken in the future.

BEST COFFEE IN LA?

On my last morning in LA my mom took me to a new coffee shop on Montana Ave. that reportedly sold some of the best coffee in LA. I hadn't had time to go to my beloved Cafe Balcony for a cappuccino, so I was looking foward to trying out Caffe Luxxe and getting my coffee fix in.

When we walked in, I noticed that the space is very sleek and chic. There was a small line and it grew after we'd gotten the coffee. They have a very large espresso machine and they were using Mazzer grinders (a good sign). They had two guys making coffee and one person ringing people up and it was a little disorganized, but fine. There was also a small case of pastries, as you can see in the pic below, but not much that interested me.
So I put in an order for a cappuccino for myself and a coffee for my mom. As I watched them work, I found it a bit odd that one person worked on the espresso while another was doing the foam. (Normally the barista completes a drink by themselves). I'm not sure if that was standard protocol or if they were trying to save time, but it may have effected the resulting drink. I prefer that the barista take their time to make an excellent coffee. So here's my cappuccino below. It looks pretty nice. Much better than most places out there. And they do latte art on every one of their drinks, even for the takeout cups, so that's a nice touch. But you can see that the foam isn't perfect. It's not smooth and mirror-like, which it should be. As for the espresso, I'm not sure what they're using, but it had a bitter note, even with the sugar that I'd added. I'm still a bigger fan of illy.

Here's my mom's coffee. As you can see, it's not normal drip coffee. It's two shots of espresso. I don't think they even have drip coffee on the menu, which is quite Italian. I do respect that.I also purchased this bag of mini muffins to munch on. (Allright, it's also cause they were cute). They were too sweet for my taste. I think the prices were a little higher than usual. (About what I charge). And despite the use of latte art, I still like my funky, comfy Cafe Balcony more. I'll need to make a bigger effort to get there the next time I'm in town.

FREE COFFEE!

Well, this doesn't particularly excite me ('m more interested in the free ice cream cones that pop up when Ben and Jerry's is celebrating Free Cone Day in April), but I'm surrounded by friends who are addicted to coffee. So here you go, courtesy of Kitchen Dish:

"COFFEE ON THE HOUSE New Yorkers are in for a lot of free coffee in the next couple of weeks. The first freebie is tomorrow, when McDonald's will hand out free cups of the stuff to anyone who asks for it, at any location. It's in celebration of being named by Consumer Reports as having the best coffee for the price (compared with other fastfood chains).

Then next Thursday, Starbucks is celebrating its second annual "coffee break" by pouring free 12-ounce cups (tall, not grande or venti) of brewed coffee between 10 a.m. and noon.

And then finally, on Wednesday, March 21, Dunkin' Donuts will celebrate the first day of spring with a free 16-ounce cup of iced coffee all day long."

True, this article specifically refers to McDonald's, but these promos normally run nationwide. You can check individual websites on your own to verify.

A QUICK CUP OF TEA AT THE KOOKOO CAFE

Last week Leah mentioned that she had seen a new bakery had opened up in Brookline Village on Station Street. And strangely enough that same week, Daily Candy had a little write up of the same place, called the KooKoo Cafe. Now, the pottery studio I used to work out is also located on Station St., so I knew that the only place this new cafe could be located was where this cute Middle Eastern sandwich place had been. So, since I need to return a DVD in Coolidge Corner, which was also where Jayna was having lunch, we decided to meet up for a quick snack and check out the new cafe.

Here's their door:So upon entering the KooKoo, I noticed that they'd really opened up the space. It's still tiny. With only 3 tables, but it was also very cozy and cute. There's a very simple sandwich menu and there are a bunch of baked goods, which they get from Iggy's.

Since neither of us was particularly hungry, we didn't order much. Jayna got a steamed milk while I got a tea and a pecan bun. It's kinda funny, cause I used to order these exact same pastries for my store (though the pecan buns kept attracting fruit fries, so we got rid of them pretty fast). Anyway, here it is below. Sticky , sweet and totally yummy. And no fruit flies.So since we didn't have much food to document, I took interior shots of the place so you could get an idea of what it looks like. Here's one of their cases, along with Jayna's shoulder. Here's some random food and nicknacks they have for sale.In addition to the pastries and sandwiches, there's a scattering of random foodstuff you can buy, like bags of coffee and tea. I was surprised to find that they served Terroir Coffee, from George Howell's coffee company. This is the first time I've seen it sold anywhere in Boston and I'd like to go back sometime to try it. For those of you who don't know, George Howell is this super famous coffee guy in Boston. He used to own a company called Coffee Connection, which he eventually sold to Starbucks. But he recently started another company called Terroir Coffee located out in Acton. Hopefully I'll get out there one day and review it for all of you.

But back to Kookoo cafe. I think it's a cute place to stop and relax with friend or on your own. They have some magazines to flip through or games to play with. We learned from the highly inquisitive owner that they've been open for 3 months now. He liked asking lots of questions, particularly where we lived (though we attempted to be vauge about it) and where we'd found out about his store, but he was nice enough to let us stay a bit late, even though they closed at 5.

And just as a little side note. After we got kicked out of Kookoo, we wandered over to a little grocery store on Harvard called the Village Store or something of that sort and were surprised to find a fully stocked Korean grocery store, replete with little Korean women. Who knew that there was a population of elderly Korean women? We browsed their aisles and though we didn't pick up much, it's great to know there's a place to stock up on kimchi if you ever need it.