Caffe Strada on a recent autumn night. Photo: Ira Serkes
In a new occasional series, Berkeleyside’s Siciliana Trevino sets out to eat, and report on, every restaurant on College Avenue — from Bancroft to Broadway — taking in the gourmet goldmines that are the Elmwood and Rockridge neighborhoods in between. Second up: Caffe Strada.
At a time when boutique roasters like Blue Bottle, Verve and Stumptown are making their mark on the artisanal coffee trend, Caffe Strada remains true to its roots, serving only espresso made from a proprietary blend of organic fair trade beans supplied by McLaughlin Coffee Company in Emeryville. The café hasn’t served drip coffee since owner Daryl Ross opened Strada on Jan. 30, 1989.
“That’s an intentional choice of mine because I feel like we’re specialists in espresso and I like not diluting the concept by having other stuff,” said Ross, a UC Berkeley graduate who also owns the Free Speech Café on campus, Café Zeb at the law school, and Freehouse, just across the street from Strada. For someone who supplies Cal with its main source of caffeine, Ross is pleasantly down-to-earth and unassuming.
“Every part of me loves this idea of Strada being this simple, pure, pseudo-European business. Like when you go to France, this is what we have, you know?”(...)
Read the rest of Eat the Street: Invention, tradition at Caffe Strada (949 words)
By Siciliana. |
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Post tags: Berkeley dining, Cafe Zeb, Caffe Strada, Coffee, Coffee in Berkeley, Daryl Ross, Eat the Street, Free Speech Cafe, Freehouse, Guittard Chocolate, McLaughlin Coffee Company, Strada Bianca Mocha, Vice-President Al Gore
