Behind the Tip of the Tongue

So, behind the tip of the tongue would be...mid-tongue? Let me take you right into the middle of the tongue then...

Today, the Q got a sneak peak inside the shoppe everyone is talking about. Okay, not EVERYONE, but an awful lot of people seem to want to know what's happening with the old Blue Roost that was K-Dog place. And I'm here to tell you that the Q, while admittedly easily impressed, was pretty overwhelmed. I'm saying that TotT is hott. As in, this place looks great, smells great (they were testing out the baking this morning), tastes great (ditto, on the croissants at least), and, yes, the coffee's quite good (well, I don't know anything about coffee except that the coffee tasted like...coffee. And an awful lot of work is going into it, including the pouring over of the coffee over the grinds, which suggests to me they know what they're doing, though I'm pretty sure Mr. Coffee has been doing that for awhile. The espresso machine looks positively Chitty Chitty Bang Bang however).

To the connoisseurs and belly-minded, the deets are these: Forty Weight will be your coffee and comes with its own sommelier, so there was Matt Marks from the company busy readying the industrial machinery to make the coffee brew-ready. I know some people really geek out on this stuff, so at the bottom of this post I cut and pasted an orientation on their articulation of the java creation vis a vis the pouring of the hot water over the coffee to make the coffee into coffee. (In case you're salivating, they're not opening til just after Memorial Day. Sorry!)

Fresh euro-style breads have been missing from the neighborhood - and fresh baguettes and the like they will serve. The pastries are all designed by co-owner Eric McIntyre who is a proper pastry chef with credentials from Eleven Madison Park, which is someone named Daniel Humm's restaurant. I'm reveling in the fact that I know nothing about any of this stuff - but it's exciting to see how excited are the partners, their partners, and their partner's partners. Seems like a class act start to finish. Here's the folks I met this morning, and their roles:

From left to right, that's co-owners/spouses/daddies Scott Fagan and Eric McIntyre, Matt Marks the brew-meister, and Bethany Morey and Zahra Lee, your Pastry Sous Chefs.

I had a double-d delightful time talking to the fellas. Scott's a born and bred multi-generational New Yorker, with interestingly enough Caribbean roots on his mother's side. Who knew there was a centuries-old community of immigrant Jews on St. Thomas? Well, Scott did. And now I do too. Look it up! After a high-tech stint in San Fran during the go-go late '90s, he met his future husband Eric, and after the tech boom up-belly-ed, they both enrolled at the Institute of Culinary Education (ICE) in Manhattan, and soon after founded their successful catering business "Tip of the Tongue." Thankfully, despite their pedigrees, they don't come off as food snobs in the least. They seem passionate about food and business and the neighborhood they call home, which the Q calls Lefferts. They live on Winthrop between Flatbush and Bedford and their toddler son will matriculate at Maple Street School next year.

What else? Oh, the decor is very considered. I noted the cool decorative walls made of moulding from old houses:

 The nifty arbor inspired wall paper:

The retooling of Blue Roost's display case into a refrigerated air tight utilitarian pretty thingy:

And of course, my favorite word of the decade, the sconces, which I'm betting go very nicely with scones:

Good luck gentlemen! Look for a soft launch just after Memorial Day, meaning shorter hours, while they fine-tune things. Please, save your reviews til they've been up and running for a few days.

God bless America, and God bless good croissants.

Appendix on the coffee:

The Coffee

While opening/designing/constructing the first Forty Weight cafe was a HUGE learning experience, coffee is what the company knows, and knows well. All of the coffee for the cafe is sourced and roasted by co-owner/roastmaster Andrew Ballard in Freeville, NY. Roasted and shipped twice weekly, the coffee being served in the cafe is never more than a few days post-roast. Most of the coffee is brewed to order on a custom made pourover bar, using Hario v60s, and Coava Kone filters. There are always three different impressive options for customers to choose from for their pourover coffee. For those customers in a hurry, who just need to get in and get out, there is french pressed coffee ready in thermo-carafes. During the warmer months, the cafe offers cold brew iced coffee. In an effort to offer our customers the most comprehensive experience, we also offer the Japanese method for preparing iced coffee.

The Espresso

In a specialty coffee world where espresso seems to be getting subtly marginalized in favor of single origin black coffee, Forty Weight Coffee stands firm as espresso junkies. The cafe's espresso is ground using Mazzer Superjolly grinders and pulled through a two group La Marzoccos GB/5. Each talented barista has his or her own personal and passionate relationship with this high-caliber equipment and Forty Weight's brilliant espressos, and the results are dramatic. The cafe serves Forty Weight signature Pressure Drop Espresso, as well as a rotating single origin espresso. At the time of this writing, the single origin espresso is one of the finalists from the El Salvador Cup of Excellence.