Coffee Shop Review – Coffee Slingers

No gimmicks here. No roasting their own beans out in the open (a la Elemental Coffee), or selling brewing equipment. No, what you’ll find here is absolutely spectacular espresso, espresso based drinks, pour over coffee, chai, tea, funky baked goods and sodas. Perfect.

They use a cutting-edge Synesso espresso machine! They have an assortment of Mazzer grinders, each devoted to a particular function! They only use bottomless portfilters and time the shots! Are you kidding me? I highly approve their attention to detail when they make a drink, because for espresso I’m not sure you can be too careful or anal-retentive. As I pointed out in my review of Full Circle Books, all it takes is negligence to ruin a shot of espresso.

They are located in a big beautiful open airy spacy that’s great for work and reading. I love coming here and just hanging out, reading a paper and having too much coffee. And yes, I did pester the baristas (or “coffee slingers”) with my questions about where to find good espresso and where I could buy an espresso machine and grinder in this city (the barista suggested a la Pavoni manual machine! She may have just been messing with me though; from what I understand la Pavoni’s, and all manual machines for that matter, are notoriously challenging for beginners).

So I kind of have to correct myself: now that I think about it they do have a couple of coffee related gadgets that you can buy there, including a metal French press and a manual grinder (the Camano Coffee Mill by Red Rooster Trading Company. I intend to buy one of these guys to add to my ever growing collection of hand grinders. I’ll put up a review when I do). But the amount of care that these guys (and gals) put into making your drinks should otherwise convince you to leave the espresso making to the professionals.