The notion of reviewing coffee isn’t novel, but what appears to be a rising trend from my vantage point, is a growing desire to provide consumers with a numerical score which they can use to judge the quality of a particular coffee.

As someone who has been in the high end specialty market for the last 5 years, I have resisted the urge to provide our customers with a review score as I think that they are inherently dangerous and often mislead the consumer. While I know that many will disagree with me, I think we can go to school with what has happened in the wine industry, namely, the Robert Parker effect.

Yesterday we stopped into Alistair & Robert's new shop on Ash and Broadway.  The new Elysian room is still a work in progress, and will only get better.  Having said that, the coffee was great as always, and Robert and Alistair were their usual welcoming selves.  It was great to see their new space and reconnect in the rainy city, although it wasn't raining yesterday.  The 1200 square foot space is fully equipped with a kitchen, and of course the 3 group Synesso and two shinny Clovers sitting side by side, nice and low on the front bar.  We sipped some of their Ethiopia Bedane and a nice Costa, before pouring some of the El Salvador Gladys that I had brought along.  The location is right along a fairly busy street, and is urban to say the least, in comparison to the original Elysian Room.  When finished, the new cafe will feature a tasting bar at the rear of the cafe, and will have better signage outside, so it will be easier to find the place.  They are also licensed, so at some point, you will be able to wet your whistle with more than just finely pulled espresso.  It is exciting to see the coffee culture mature in Vancouver, and I am looking forward to the day, hopefully not to long from now, where Transcend can announce the opening of its second cafe.  Until then, all you Vancouverites should venture down to the new Elysian Room and saddle up to the bar.  Tell them Poul sent you.

Oh by the way, I also shot some video on my new HD Sanyo 1010 Xacti, but the video on my computer was all jerky.  I think it has something to do with the way I uploaded it.  Hopefully we can even get a little video up on our site in the near future.  I will be taking lots of video footage in Costa Rica, Panama and El Salvador, so brace yourselves for video content on the Transcend blog probably sometime in March.