Back from Florida

I'm back from five days in West Palm Beach, Florida. Of course we brought our own private coffee stash, which we brewed in a practically antique Melitta travel coffee maker in our hotel room. Although I did sample the coffee at Cappuccino's, an Italian restaurant on Okechobee Blvd, and it was disappointing. They charge $4.75 for their cappuccinos. At that price, the cappuccino oughta dance right into your mouth! However, I opted to not try one, since the drip coffee was bad, I figured the cappuccino would probably be worse. Although I admit I was curious. The food was pretty good. I guess it'll have to wait until next trip (I go to West Palm generally every year or two to visit my in-their-90s-grandparents).

The best find in West Palm Beach was "Field of Greens" cafe, at City Place, 460 South Rosemary Avenue, owned by Debbie Lakow and David Steinhardt, brother and sister team. The food was refreshingly good, (crisp, interesting salads, good smoothies, satisfying soup). Carl and I bonded with Debbie and David, talking about the importance of friendly service. Plus, Debbie said she liked the coffee we left for them. I think it was Red Cape Blend. Who wouldn't like that?

The last morning Carl and I realized that we were out of filters for our brewer. So we had to settle for the restaurant's liquid coffee, which was drinkable. Not good, just drinkable. Then there was a Starbucks latte to the rescue at the airport. Should I admit that I drink Starbucks? Well, I do when I'm desperate. We noticed that this particular Starbucks had not one, but TWO Caffina C-5 automatic machines. These machines are so sophisticated that they make it really hard to screw up the coffee. Dennis, our Espresso Wizard, fixes these, and Will, our in-progress Espresso Tech, just completed a seminar from Michaelo Espresso on how to repair these complex babies as well. So I'm all for the fact that Starbucks uses these superautomatics. It keeps the espresso repair folks like us in business!

It's good to be back in Cleveburg. I spent the plane ride home reading about Costa Rica and working on refining our itinerary for next January. It's going to be a great trip! Stay posted for more details.