Walkable Eastwood » Eastwood Plaza

Let’s talk about coffee!

Lonnie — Sat, 18 Apr 2009 15:19:16 +0000

I’ll admit it. I’m a coffee nut. So I emailed my neighborhood coffee roaster to see what was going to be available this week. The answer: the usual great selection, plus a Kenya Chania Estate organic. This one is roasted to a full city roast, which works well in my antique vacuum pot. The label on the bag tells me what’s inside. The aroma: lemon, berry. Taste: papaya, spice. Body: medium. Aftertaste: milk chocolate.

Am I so experienced that I was able to actually pick up on all that? Not by a long shot. But I do know that when I taste this coffee and I don’t have to put cream in it, it’s because it’s smooth and bursting with flavors that are too interesting to cover up.

In case you haven’t been reading this blog for awhile, you may have missed the fact that Eastwood boasts one of the best coffee roasters in the Northeast. At one end of our James Street business district, in the Eastwood Plaza, is Cafe Kubal. While the cafe itself is small (okay, it’s tiny!), the taste of the coffees being roasted before your eyes in the 1904 roaster is huge. Matt and Rachel Godard go out of their way to find the best beans, to form business relationships with the growers themselves, and to bring the beans to Syracuse where Matt roasts them expertly.

In the cafe, you always have a choice of light or dark roasts for your cup o’ joe, as well as the usual variety of ways to prepare it. These folks pull a mean shot, equal to the best to be found in cities like New York, Philadelphia, Ithaca. Even if you’re not likely to do it often, try their espresso drinks once in awhile. You’ll never go back to Charbucks.

But if you just want a great cup of coffee at home, pick up a bag of beans. They’ll grind them for you or you can buy them whole for grinding at home. (If you want really great coffee taste, you’ll invest in a grinder and grind seconds before brewing.) Either way, you’ll know the date when the beans were roasted so you can be sure to use them within about ten days, when they’re at their peak of flavor.

Don’t want coffee? Try one of their many teas! In the mood for something to eat? They have an array of cookies, muffins, bagels, desserts – including Purity Ice Cream from Ithaca – as well as soups and other savory items.

Do you live out of town? That’s okay. Cafe Kubal’s internet business is even older than the cafe, and Matt ships his coffee all over this country and internationally. So if you’re originally from Eastwood and want to support a local business, give his coffee a try!

One of the best things about Cafe Kubal, of course, is that it’s located in a “20-minute city” – that is, everyone who lives in Eastwood (formerly a village, now a neighborhood), is within a 20-minute walk of the cafe. A daily walk of about 20 minutes is considered by some to be the minimum amount of exercise for maintaining health. How sweet it is, to combine a walk along Eastwood’s sidewalk-lined streets with a top-notch coffee experience.

The Mother Cup

Lonnie — Fri, 02 Nov 2007 19:14:28 +0000

Did you ever search for something for years, even decades, and then… you found it? It’s so wonderfully gratifying when that happens, no matter how seemingly insignificant the object of the search might be. For my part, I spent most of my adult life searching for The Mother Cup…

I didn’t call it that when I first met it. The Mother Cup back in 1976 was the first café con leche that I had in the Canary Islands, on the island of Tenerife, in the fishing village of El Médano. It was outstandingly delicious, and I got used to drinking it during the two half-year stints I did living in Spain back then. The other coffee I adored was called un cortado in the Canaries. It was espresso with sweetened condensed milk served in a tiny glass. If you try a Vietnamese coffee over at New Century Restaurant on Kirpatrick Street, you’ll have an idea of what it tastes like.

So I returned to the States and spent the next thirty years looking for a decent cup of coffee. During that time, tastes changed in this country and bit by bit, good espresso could be found in some cities (forget Starbucks – it’s always over-roasted). But I found it impossible to get a barista to duplicate what by then had become The Mother Cup (you know… the first one becomes your mother). It wasn’t until I described it to Matt Godard at Cafe Kubal that I finally got what I’d been searching for. He understood how to pull just the right number of shots of espresso and exactly how much steamed milk to put into it and just how much foam I did not want. Upon that first sip, the skies opened up, the angels sang (en español) and I was instantly transported back to Tenerife, to warm beaches and the tallest mountain in Spain, Tenerife’s volcano “El Teide“.

Now I can get that cup of coffee any time I walk over to Cafe Kubal at the Eastwood Plaza. It never ceases to amaze and delight me. You can try it, too. Just ask for The Mother Cup.

Two young women enjoy a Canarian café con leche and un cortado
in the café halfway up the side of El Teide.

Eastwood facade grant program in newscast

Lonnie — Wed, 10 Oct 2007 13:42:21 +0000

Thank you, WSYR, for that great newscast on the facade program for James Street businesses! As many as 20 businesses in a 5-block stretch will be able to take advantage of this grant program, so this will have a major impact on the way James Street looks. That, in turn, will attract the kinds of businesses we’d like to see fill in the gaps.

The newscast highlights Cafe Kubal (no, it’s not Kabul, despite the newscaster’s pronunciation of it), a successful and unique business that’s working out of a tiny shop in the Eastwood Plaza. Watch the video of the newscast for the whole story – you’ll even see Matt Godard doing some of that great latte art!

Sweet and savory at the cafe

Lonnie — Tue, 26 Jun 2007 23:15:23 +0000

At Cafe Kubal, in the Eastwood Plaza on James St., we are frequently tempted by these heavenly goodies:

But for the more health-conscious, Matt and Rachel are now offering this:

Watching your carb consumption? Just want something savory? Check this one out – we did, and it’s the best hummus we’ve ever had!

But… what do we come to a cafe for, anyway? Why, the “café”!

Matt’s getting really good at this latte art!

Café Kubal opens at Eastwood Plaza

Lonnie — Sat, 10 Mar 2007 21:48:06 +0000

Walk into Cafe Kubal, just three blocks from the corner of James and Midler, and you immediately know where you are. There is no other cafe like it, for where else will you find not only precisely these beans being roasted in this particular antique roaster, but also the work of The Craftsman, Ron Cosser, who carries on the artistry of Gustav Stickley, fronting the counter that holds your just- made cup of cappuccino? In addition to coffee drinks and teas at reasonable prices, you’ll also find Austrian- style pastries made with butter that’s flown in from Austria! Cafe Kubal is located in what’s commonly known as Sacred Melody Plaza, but the plaza recently got a new lease on life and is now officially the Eastwood Plaza.

Matt and Rachel Godard

It’s businesses like these that create a sense of place, that foster a sense of authentic human attachment and belonging. We welcome businesses to Eastwood that are, whenever possible, locally owned and operated, for it’s the people from here who understand the needs of the people who live here.

SLIDE SHOW

Matt and Rachel Godard are the owners, employees, coffee gurus, and clean-up crew. In other words, they care deeply about every detail. An example noticed by a visiting customer: when Rachel chose a cookie from a stack for a customer, she picked one from under the top one, as the top one would be a shade dryer than the ones under it.

Another customer asked Matt, “How long do you roast the beans?”

Matt said, “Well, it depends on which bean it is, how high it was grown, the humidity, and so on. The longest roast is 45 minutes. The hottest is only for about 12 minutes.”

“How do know when it’s done?” the customer asked.

Matt just pointed to his nose with both hands and then to both his ears. He knows because he really knows his coffee. This is small-batch, artesanal coffee roasting, and Matt is a craftsman who lives and loves his product.

“It’s like when you make popcorn in the microwave. You listen for when the popping reaches a certain rate. The modern roasters have gauges and computers. I think they over-complicate things.”

Cafe Kubal was attracting all sorts of interesting people this morning. Steven Skinner, the owner of the plaza, stopped in to chat with us about the amazing series of events that was making his plaza bloom with businesses, including the True Value Hardware that moved in from down James St. He told us of the history of the plaza, the very first strip mall in the Syracuse area. He gave us pictures of the grand opening of the plaza back in 1953, and told us of more old pictures of the plaza that were found hidden in a wall in an Eastwood home until their discovery a few years ago. The cafe is in the old Merchants Bank space, so deep underneath it is a bank vault!

Another visitor to the cafe was The Craftsman, Ron Cosser. We had noticed the gorgeous wood front to the cafe’s counter. It had that Arts and Crafts look to it. Turns out Ron made it. After we finished our coffee and pastries, we went with him into the Parable Christian Store where you can see a fireplace surround that should be in the Everson Museum. Then we went to his workshop in the lower level of the plaza where he showed us around and regaled us with fascinating stories and his own, well-developed philosophies of work and life.

Folks, there isn’t enough room in this posting to go into a lot more detail about this man and his work. For now, we’ll let his gorgeous website do the talking.

Just remember, though: he carries on a tradition of fine craftsmanship that started in Eastwood with the workshop of Gustav Stickley. Uncompromising in his vision for making the highest quality furniture possible, Ron should be considered a national treasure. Let’s work on that. Ron Cosser, the Craftsman

Hardware mainstay moves in Eastwood

Lonnie — Mon, 29 Jan 2007 01:48:04 +0000

Sunday, January 28, 2007 (courtesy the Post-Standard)
BOB NIEDTAt least when you’re moving a hardware store, there are plenty of tools – and a fine selection of those cool brass numbers to go on the new mailbox – to get the job done.Mission accomplished at Nightingale True Value, in Eastwood.

The long-timer bounced over to the Sacred Melody plaza, 3525 James St., from 2313 James St., at the corner of Grant Boulevard.

Well, it’s actually the “Eastwood Plaza” but few of us think of it as such. We’re thrilled that True Value has stayed. Visit them, folks, and support your local economy. Keep Syracuse dollars in Syracuse!

You can bring your spent fluorescents to True Value Hardware (that’s compact, U-shaped, and/or 4-foot fluorescent bulbs). They’ll ship them for recycling. Keep hazardous waste out of the environment!