Tag: Murky

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.

Chinatown Coffee – at least it is hip

Chinatown Coffee

475 H st. NW
Washington, DC 20001
www.chinatowncoffee.com

Read about my planned cappuccino tour around the DC area.

When Chinatown coffee opened in 2010, there was a great deal of excitement surrounding it.  Nick Cho, of Murky Coffee fame (who I have mentioned in previous posts), was even general manager at Chinatown for a while (before DC went after Cho for back taxes, and they ended their “relationship”).  In fact, Chinatown was the first coffee shop I went to in the district; it was supposed to be among the best.  The shop is located in the very lively Chinatown district of DC, close to a number of large offices, shopping areas, excellent places to eat (along with a good number of really crappy Chinese restaurants), and museums.   On paper, the place has a lot going for it.  However,  I have always found it to be a bit of a letdown; I have been here many times while living in DC and it has almost always been consistently worse than other top coffee shops.  But we will come to that a bit later.

Chinatown coffee is a rather small exposed brick shop; it is what you would expect from the pinnacle of hip urbanity.  They serve bottled beer and

from Bill Walsh at Honestcooking.com

baked goods along with their coffee, but no other food.  I have to say that the muffins are delicious.  Recently they have also hosted a variety of food trucks (all the rage in DC) on Thursday nights, very cool!  It is always seems crowded (regardless of the time of day), so expect this if you visit; as with many DC coffee shops, getting a seat can be a chore.

The cappuccino looked very nice, with perfect microfoam.  This sort of foam-perfection is the norm here.  However, I was not impressed by the underlying espresso, which is odd given that Chinatown uses one of the best coffees in the country (Intelligentsia, out of Chicago).  I’m not positive about why this is, but I

A really nice looking cap

saw that they were selling some coffee beans that were well over a week old; it is possible that they were using beans that were a little past their prime.  Regardless of why the espresso was lackluster, it lacked any real complexity and had an off-putting bitterness.  This is certainly unfortunate given how seriously they seem to take the preparation of their coffee drinks.  Here are the ratings, all out of a possible 5 points:

Smoothness: 3.3

Presentation: 5

Strength: 4.7

Complexity: 4.0

Foam: 5

Mean: 4.4

SD: .74

Chinatown is certainly the best coffee shop in its part of DC, however there are better offerings  in nearby Capitol Hill and Dupont Circle.  If you are in the area it is certainly a place to check out, but if you are willing to travel a bit there are better offerings elsewhere.