"Welcome to Five Senses Coffee"

One of the things you learn as you make your way through life is that not every place you visit will serve up a decent brew. Most of you who read our website stories probably realise that I’m quite addicted to coffee. I hardly ever think about it. I drink coffee for a living, so I rarely start craving good coffee before I’ve actually had my first cup.

That is, until I leave the roastery for any extended period. On holidays (we tend to go camping) it isn’t an issue, because I tend to put as much thought into how I’ll brew my coffee as to what wine I take or which camping site I choose. The problem exists, ironically, when I’m away on Five Senses business. I regularly flit between Perth and Melbourne — no problem there. I know cafés in both cities that serve excellent coffee. Adelaide and Sydney also have their own temples to great coffee; they just take a little longer to find because I’m less familiar with these cities. Seattle is easy; the Synesso factory not only has a warm and ready machine, but an enthusiastic workforce eager to tear themselves away from the assembly line to pull a shot for visitors like me.

The problem arises when I arrive in a place where there appears to be simply nowhere that serves a decent cup. A vertitable coffee desert. This was our experience in Paris.

Every two years Milan hosts a huge Coffee Expo. It is the only time in the calendar when nearly every manufacturer of roasters, grinders, espresso machines, coffee packaging and coffee gadgets come together under one massive roof. Many people, like me, use the opportunity to combine visiting the expo with trips to the manufacturing facilities of the companies that we buy equipment from. We were in Paris because Five Senses owns five French-manufactured roasting machines.

I knew from previous experience that the French have a unique approach to making espresso coffee. I like the French. I like their odd-shaped cars, their food, their language and their art, their culture and architecture. I don’t like their coffee — which might seem weird given that we own French-manufactured roasting equipment.

I’ll describe how they prepare and extract espresso:

1. Turn on grinder and fill dosing hopper to top.
2. Place wet and muddy portafilter under dosing hopper and dump random amount of coffee into basket.
3. Lock portafilter into espresso machine.
4. Pull shot.
5. Keep pulling shot.
6. Pull a bit more of the shot, just in case.

This may sound harsh, but it’s all true. They don’t start with a clean portafilter, they don’t tamp and they run about 90ml of shot in about 15 seconds. I knew there was a limit to the amount of time I could handle abstaining from coffee, and I knew that it would eventually boil down to a choice between a French-made espresso or a Panadol — unless we could find somewhere that didn’t go about it in the French kind of way. So we thought about it in a very Australian kind of way – we found a local internet café and opened Google.

Search: French Barista champion, World Barista Competition French competitor

Eureka, the French had entered a competitor! This meant there had to be at least one place in Paris that dosed fresh, consistently tamped and pulled 25ml shots in about 30 seconds!

After further searching and a close examination of street and underground train maps, we discovered where our French competitor worked — the Alto Café. We headed straight there, only to find ourselves at a street front entry to a set of flats in the dodgy end of town. Dang! We needed assistance and tried to enlist the help of anyone passing by.

“Sorry, no English”, “Sorry, no English” and more “Sorry, no English”. Eventually, we found ourselves in a shoe shop. Mum was buying shoes for her kids and her teenage daughter spoke English. They were such good Samaritans. Using their local mobile phone, they rang the contact number listed with the address of Alto Café (which was linked to the victor of the French Barista Champion, Omri Kenan) and found that the number was for the home office of the café owner rather than the café itself. They discovered where the café was located and kindly walked us halfway there. The café ended up being two funky little carts, one situated outside a large shopping complex and the other at the bottom of a set of escalators at another entrance to the same shop.

Alto Café was a welcome oasis in an espresso Sahara. One of the partners, Aleaume, came down to greet us and spent considerable time sharing his journey with us. He was so humble, and acknowledged their lack of understanding about specialty espresso. He explained the uphill battle he faced when he served anything different to the standard French espresso fare. He reflected on how his customers felt ripped off if he pulled a shot shorter than 60ml. His voice was a genuine mixture of exasperation and excitement about the future.

It was a great experience. It highlighted the value of the Specialty Coffee movement and the World Barista Competition. Most importantly, it demonstrated that, with enough effort, you can find a good coffee nearly everywhere.