Very central. The only place where I managed to get a decently flavoured shot. Good ice cream too!
The first time I went, the coffee knocked my socks off! The double espresso was pulled too long (probably 75-100 ml) but the crema was very good - a nice tan colour, with no sign of whiteout. The flavour was exceptional, with a winey and musty/bitey combination of flavours that was (I think) reminiscent of Indian coffees and probably a bit of monsooned malabar. No harshness, no bite, very smooth. Mouthfeel a little thin, presumably because of the length of the shot. Overall the best coffee I've had in a shop for a very long time.
Subsequent visits never quite managed to reproduce that bell-ringing first experience, but the coffee was always somewhere between reasonable and good. Nowhere else in Baden-Baden even came close.
Interestingly every cafe I found used a super-auto bean to cup jobby. No traditional machines were in sight. And do you know what? On balance I approve. You're never going to get a "God shot" from a superauto, but you're never going to get one in most cafes anyway. If places don't want to invest in the training, equipment and time to produce top quality espresso based drinks (or don't even understand why they should
) then a superauto and a good cleaning regime is one way to produce something drinkable, assuming decent beans. Heresy? I don't think so personally. Better coffee is the objective, and most cafes simply aren't interested in the level of commitment to the process that TMC members take for granted.
But someone really ought to tell these guys how to foam milk! Sea foam and meringues everywhere! :harrumph:
