Just flew into Chicago today. So far I've had a double ristretto at Caffe Streets and Intelligentsia by Millennium Park. Both were excellent. I bought some Brazilian Agua Preta from Intelligentsia, which they had a thing where it was $2 off AND you get a free espresso with a bean purchase.

At Caffe Streets they have the Synesso Hydra. What a machine!


Even better, tasting their stuff makes me feel a lot better about my own espresso. It's not as good as theirs, of course, but now knowing what great espresso tastes like, I can say I was being too harsh on my own (mostly due to not fully knowing what it "should" taste like).

My bean quest continues tomorrow! Think Caffe Streets would let me pull my own shot if I gave them a big tip?

HB wrote:It's not a cafe, but CoffeeCon 2012 is this weekend in Chicago. Jim Schulman will be among the speakers.

I read about that. Unfortunately, due to the last minute circumstances of me being here, I wasn't able to have my return flight scheduled a couple extra days later like I normally do to have some free time to really play around. I fly back to Texas Friday afternoon, so no CoffeeCon for me.

another_jim wrote:There's a great cafe crawl in Wicker Park -- Ipsento, Buzzkill, Wormhole, and Streets. These are all new guys; Metropolis and Intelligentsia are the established players.

Last I hear, Wormhole was closed to move the ... well, I won't ruin the surprise for Cory. My point is that they may still be closed for renovations. Shouldn't stop you from heading over, though. You can always wander back to Damen and hit up Buzz then the 56 bus north to Western and hit up Ipsento.