A New Age of Boston Coffee
- Details
- Published on Wednesday, 18 January 2012 10:41
- Written by Thomas Dean
“Barista” to most, means the employee behind the counter who takes the orders and pulls a lever, but Schyndel’s coffee shop and roaster company, Barismo, indicates a art form in which the process, from plant to cup, is meticulously monitored.
Schyndel started his venture into the auteur coffee world when he joined a club in which friends would gather at a member’s house who had a Synesso espresso machine, and try different roasters.
Schyndel worked at Simon’s, a shop that served espresso and rotated roasters, a novelty for Cambridge at the time. He became cynical towards the world of roasters, because they were more concerned with pushing their product than focusing on how it was served. “A lot of people come off as used car salesmen,” he says. It didn’t take his business degree to figure out that the only way up, was out on his own, and if roasters refused to get down to the nitty gritty, he figured it was time to take matters into his own hands.
It takes work to find Barismo. The undistinguishable Mass. Ave. locale in Arlington is only noticeable upon second glance. Inside, no yuppies sit and talk politics, for there are no tables, no soon-to-benever novelists type on MacBooks, there is no WiFi. There is a bar for ordering, pouring and serving, and in the back a set of rotating machinery mixes and roasts Barismo’s beans, that are sold in bags in a small alcove off to the side. “Everything is about transparency,” Schyndel says as he sights the Scandanavian approach to coffee he adopted. Each bag of Barismo tells how the coffee was stored, processed, the harvest and varietals—the particular coffee plant under the genus of arabica.
Schyndel keeps the espresso blends simple, this lets him help customers verbally dissect their espresso so he can cater to their taste, similar to a wine consultant. Schyndel has a full-time green buyer, who visits coffee farms and selects the choicest beans for Barismo to roast. The baristas who serve the coffee, help put the “ismo” flare in the shop’s name (think of macho as opposed machismo). Each coffee is poured individually with a precise grind, particular flow of water, monitored temperature and pattern of pouring.
Everyone who serves Barismo coffee is trained by Schyndel. Schyndel is optimistic about Cambridge’s coffee scene, especially with vendors like Voltage and Hi-Rise as other serious players.
Three years ago, he recalls the atmosphere as cutthroat between the shops, but now there is more of a competitive camaraderie. Boston in his eyes still hasn’t caught on, a city generations behind, full establishments that are nothing more than “anti-Starbucks, Starbucks” with not enough patience for the particulars.
