7 March, 2018: I have a video of Blue Bottle pour over circa 2003 at the Ferry Building in SF. It’s awesome, and raw. Huge line. Sternos and cheap kettles. 40g coffee per 8oz cup (an enormous dosing). A spoon stirring the grounds. Splashes and spills. And I’ve watched Blue Bottle evolve and expand. I’d heard that Tokyo was a… Read More
6 March, 2018: Japanese pickling is so different from what I’m used to in the USA. We visited Kyoto where pickles are one of the most important regional items. Pickles were everywhere. In the US almost 100% of pickles we consume are made from vinegar brine. If you’ve ever had a true “sour” or “half-sour” pickle, that’s salt brine, as… Read More
6 March, 2018: Ever since I first learned of Japanese tea ceremony I’ve wanted to experience one. Clementine and I found a tea house in the middle of a garden in Tokyo and it was AWESOME! There are a bunch of details to the etiquette that they patiently taught us. The simplified version is (a) eat the sweet first and… Read More
2 March, 2018: If you’ve been reading the blog lately or hanging out with me you know I’ve spent an inordinate amount of time thinking about packaging recently. Packaging is easily the most hairy operational issue we face with the Clover App rollout. And while it pales in comparison to the positive impact we have by excluding meat from our… Read More
1 March, 2018: Vincenzo (leads food production at Clover) and Greg (our COO) both have Italian heritage. So what did they think of Italian Japanese food? To be fair we only tried it once. But capturing this expression on film wasn’t that hard because they held this pose for a while. The site horrifying them: a giant wheel of parm… Read More
28 February, 2018: I first started thinking seriously about savory breakfast when I saw my father-in-law make oatmeal with soup stock. I’ve been wondering for years now whether there is a place for savory on Clover’s breakfast menu. Enzo says emphatic YES. First morning in Japan. And we’re having a traditional Japanese breakfast. I want to make this when I… Read More
27 February, 2018: We try to get a food trip in once a year or so. Past trips have included Calabria and Sicily for the Panelle and other recipes, Texas BBQ sauce (we ate at Franklins when we were both still trucks), New Orleans for chicory coffee, Great Lakes for frozen custard. This year we’re Japan bound. I’ll be updating… Read More
14 February, 2018: This past weekend we drove to Michigan to visit my family. It was a grueling trip. Heavy snow for 80% of the drive, 35 mph on highway, low visibility, no plows out. The 12 hour trip took 16 hours. We were in Michigan for less than 24 hours then returned through another storm. But it was all… Read More
13 February, 2018: We’re on the eve of our first ever public release of the Clover App. I started dreaming about this back in 2009 when we built what might have been the world’s first cloud-based POS. Back then we had 1 food truck. Over the past 18 months or so we have been beta testing an app. It’s been… Read More
20 November, 2017: That pop-up thing has had some amazing highs (Grillos, the wonderful FoMu, Union Donuts, and the cash for warhol stand out in my mind). But it takes a ton of management to do well, and I just don’t have somebody to put on it. We’re focused on other things (we’re growing 40% or so right now!) I… Read More