Chris Cheng BAR MANAGER, BARLEYMASH Q: If you could drink one thing, not from your establishment, in SD for the rest of your life what would it be? Chris Cheng: Harvey Wallbanger at Sycamore Den. It's bitter and sweet and it’s fun to say. Q: Name your top, can't-live-without spirits to mix with? CC: Gin, bourbon and mezcal. Gin because it has so many different great flavors you can play with. Bourbon because it's bourbon. And Mezcal because everyone loves a little smoke. Q: Tell us about your favorite drink at barleymash. CC: Doctor's Orders. Made with Cucumber infusedAbsolut Pear vodka, lime, orgeat and cinnamon sugar. A runner up is our House Old Fashioned. Even though everyone has one, ours is unique because we go to Kentucky to hand-select the barrels. barleymash loves using bourbon in our menu, so you know our Old Fashioneds are always good. Q: What is the most unique ingredient that you use in your cocktails? CC: We use syrups by a company called Liquid Alchemist. They make our raspberry and pomegranate syrups. Super high quality, full of fresh flavors and made in Los Angeles. The R&D Bitters Aromatic #7 is made here in San Diego and we use it in our House Mule. BARLEYMASH 600 Fifth Ave San Diego, CA 92101 619.255.7373 www.barleymash.com
Sarah Girdzius and Ewan Bennie MANAGER & WHOLESALE AND BARISTA, JAMES COFFEE CO. Q: If you could drink one thing that isn't coffee, not from your establishment, in SD for the rest of your life what would it be? Ewan Bennie: Beer. I drink a lot of beer. I love Ballast Point beers. They're right down the street and we have a really good relationship with them so I enjoy going down there. Sarah Girdzius: I'm a whiskey drinker, so I like going down to Arrow Club. They have really good old fashioned whiskeys. Q: What's different at James that you're not going to get at your typical chain coffee shop? SG: We care a lot about the preparation of our coffee, we spend a lot of time on the preparation and in tasting and trying our coffees over and over again. We weigh everything from beginning to finish here. When you get a pour-over—the dried coffee is weighed, the water is weighed, so we pay a lot of attention to our recipe. On top of that, the beans we source are all really high quality and we roast the coffee to its best potential. We're not over roasting, we're not roasting it really dark, it's all very light to medium roast so that it's very flavorful.
Q: Tell us about your favorite drink at James. EB: I really like our honey cinnamon. It's a really great combination, classic. It's got a really good balance to it, it’s not too sweet and not too spicy. I like it in the smaller eight ounce size because it's a little bit stronger. More coffee forward, less milky. SG: One of our most popular customer drinks here is our Horchata Latte. We get our horchata from Por Vida. So it’s just shots of espresso with horchata on ice, so instead of milk we use horchata. It's a cold drink, but for people that have a little more of a sweet tooth it's really good. It's super tasty and Por Vida makes the horchata fresh, so that makes the difference too. Q: What is something unique to James Coffee Co.? SG: We do a direct trade coffee, which means we have a relationship with that farm. So currently our direct trade that we have is our Honduras, so we actually have a relationship with that farmer. The owners of James Coffee actually go there, check out the farm, talk to the farmer and see what can improve both there and in the way we process their coffee.
JAMES COFFEE CO. 2355 India St, San Diego, CA 92101 619.756.7770 | www.jamescoffeeco.com LOCALE MAGAZINE 71