Tag: Capitol Hill

Peregrine Espresso – As good as it gets in DC

Peregrine Espresso

1718 14th St NW
Washington DC 20009

and

660 Pennsylvania Ave SE
Washington DC 20003

www.peregrineespresso.com/

Read about my planned cappuccino tour around the DC area.

Read about my first visit to the 14th street Peregrine just after its opening.

Peregrine along 14th st. NW (from a previous post)

I discovered Peregrine Espresso shortly after moving to DC, and I have been going there pretty frequently since.  As I wondered around the DC espresso scene, I soon realized that they likely have the best cappuccino in the district, but I haven’t had a chance to do a review.  But last week, I took my camera with me to 14th street location to drink a cappuccino and get some work done.  It was as good as always.

Peregrine has two locations; one in the lovely Eastern Market neighborhood of SE DC, and one on 14th St NW in the Midcity neighborhood.  It was started by an ex-barista of Murky Coffee, which was at the Eastern Market location before its owner Nick Cho was banished from DC. The Eastern Market shop is Peregrine’s original location, and is a little larger than the 14th street location (though they are both small), but both have the same sunny interior.

This time I checked out the 14th  St. location, because it is on the green line of the Metro (and I wanted to head to College Park afterward), but I usually prefer the Eastern Market location because its neighborhood is one of the nicest in DC.  The large market there is open every day and carries many meats, fishes, and vegetables; there is also farmers market and flea market on Saturdays and Sundays.  It is all worth checking out.  That said, 14th street is a pretty interesting area as well, close to the U st corridor, featuring several music venues, bars, restaurants, galleries, and furniture stores (actually, a ton of furniture for some reason).

Ok, now to the consumables.  Peregrine has really good muffins and other baked goods, but the real show is the espresso.  They serve Counter Culture Coffee, which is phenomenal stuff.  I almost always order the cappuccino, though their espresso and

Sometimes the latte art is even better.

pour-over coffee are also great.  I’ll give my tasting notes from this week’s visit, but it was entirely consistent with my other visits there.  The latte art was exceptional, and the microfoam was perfect.  The underlying espresso was a bit nutty and sweet, with the microfoam and milk mixing in to yield some nice milk chocolate notes.  Exceptional all around.  Ok, the numbers (all out of 5):

Smoothness: 4.8

Presentation: 5

Strength: 5

Complexity: 4.2

Foam: 5

Mean: 4.8

SD: .35

If you are in DC, you should head to one of Peregrine’s locations; it will be worth the trip.  I’m going to predict that this will be the best cappuccino that I find in DC, though there are several others that might come close.  In the next few weeks, I’m going to try to hit some of the places that I think are top contenders to match Peregrine’s cappuccino.  So we shall see.

Pound Coffee now on Capitol Hill

Today I checked out Pound Coffee (621 Pennsylvania Ave SE, Washington, DC 20003), which recently moved to Capitol Hill from NOMA.  I hadn’t yet tried Pound at its previous location, but my interest perked once I heard that they are now serving Kickapoo Coffee from Viroqua, WI.  My favorite cafe in Madison, WI (and by extension, the world…) serves coffee from this roaster, so I had high hopes for a shop that serves it.  It was also apparently the best microroaster in 2010 (by Roast Magazine), so I’m not the only one who loves this stuff.

So Taryn and I stopped by Pound coffee to give it a try.  Luckily, I overheard a conversation between some of the baristas and a manager about the introduction of new size tomorrow….the classic cappuccino, which is 6ozs.  Their normal

Espresso and cappuccino

cappuccino has apparently been 12 oz.  So I inquired as to whether I could obtain one of these new fangled cappuccinos, and the manager seemed pretty excited that I was interested (he was complaining how Starbucks has made many customers expect every espresso drink to be at least 12 oz).  So I might have gotten the first “proper” cappuccino produced by Pound Coffee (that’s going to be my last snobbish sentence in this post, I promise).  It was pretty good.  The foam was near perfect, and the taste was quite nice.  I didn’t take a picture until it was half gone, but the cappuccino had some decent latte art when it was first made.  It didn’t quite match Peregrine, which is just down the street, but it gave me some faith that they will be making excellent cappuccinos in short order.  I also had an espresso, which was ok, but a bit awkward.  I imagine that any failings in their cappuccinos are coming from the underlying espresso.  It is possible that they haven’t quite adjusted for the change in coffees.

But can they seriously compete with Peregrine?  Well, if you really just want the best espresso in the city, then head on over to Peregrine; but Pound also has a full food menu (which looked pretty tasty), and Peregrine only has baked goods.  So if you want very good coffee and are a bit hungry then Pound should prob

Occupy DC tent city in McPherson Square

ably be your destination.

I also headed over to the White House area today for the first time since the “occupation” started.  I have to say, McPherson Square

is a mess.

I think I’m going to try to do some more dc cappuccino reviews this week; I have a lot of grading to do….