The Not-So-Secret Secret Spot: Kilauea Bakery (Kauai)

Wanting something light for lunch, I headed to a spot that I've always gone to when I want a quiet spot to dine and work.  It's out of the way, hidden of the main roads, and has always had a quiet charm to it. 

Imagine my surprise when I got there this morning and it was crawling with what seemed like the entire population of Kauai.  Every table was taken and there was a long line to order as well. 

Taken during a quiet period before the next rush

While Yelp, blogs like mine, and other forms of social media have made this place popular, and therefore established, it has lost a little if it's intimate charm which makes me a little sad

On the other hand, they still have great food with the best coconut macaroons I've ever had.  

Bagels (salmon cream cheese), coconut macaroons, and coffee

Thanks for playing .

Butter Coffee? How about salt instead.

There has been a lot of discussion over the last year about Bulletproof Coffee (good and bad).  While I honestly haven't tried it myself, I like to drink coffee for the taste and the few minutes of downtime it allows you to have while catching up with yourself mentally during a busy work day.

Whatever your feelings are around the "butter" coffee fad, I recommend you try "salted" coffee.  Unlike the price of putting cow fat in your cup of joe that requires you to buy all sorts of added ingredients, "salted" coffee is just as advertised.  All you need is a dash of your favorite rock salt, kosher salt, sea sat, (no table salt please) and you'll find the taste to be clearer and sweeter than usual.  Having tried this myself, I can say that it is a nice touch to enhance a good bean (Kona is my choice) and ask that you give this a try.

Thanks for playing!

Pondering Your Morning Coffee

Coffee is one of those components of food and beverage that I've always had a passion for.  By "passion" I mean, I own Auto-drips, French Presses, Vietnamese Coffee Makers, Stovetop Expresso Makers, and 2 types of grinders.  I would be one of those coffee snobs that complain about Starbucks in a way that make most regular drinkers roll their eyes.  I even have two dedicated roasters that I exclusively buy from.  One is in San Francisco (Wrecking Ball Roasters) and the other is Bayview Farms in Kealakekua, HI (I physically go there once a month for my stash).

With this in mind, I am always looking for new ways to improve my drinking experience.  Today's experiment involves adding a dash of salt to my grounds prior to brewing.  While this sounds weird, it utilizes the same chemical phenomenon that you get when you add salt to underripe fruit.  The salt will mellow out the edgy tones of the coffee and make it feel more full-bodied on the tongue. 

I first read about this technique on http://blog.khymos.org/, which is a gastronomy website that takes food in different directions and promotes the idea of molecular gastronomy.  Utilizing the procedure mentioned in an old article on this website (http://blog.khymos.org/2010/03/31/testing-salt-in-coffee-with-tim-wendelboe/), I added 16 grains of Hawaiian salt to my Kona grounds which will hopefully yield 3.5 cups of enhanced coffee.

If I got the ratio wrong, then I'll just try again tomorrow.

In the meantime, I leave you with this tidbit of information.  If you want to know the difference between gourmet coffee beans and supermarket beans, take a look at this picture:

The coffee on the left are the pre-roasted beans that you find in a gourmet store.  Every bean is picked to be uniform in size, color, and weight.  The beans on the right are whatever beans are left to sell to general wholesalers and is only measured out in weight per roasting batch.  End of the day, if you don't care about these things, then no matter.  For me, I like tasting the difference. 

Thanks for reading!!