Clockwise from top-left: Bottega Italiana, D’Ambrosio, Fainting Goat, vanilla gelato from Gelatiamo (we were unable to obtain pistachio from them this weekend, so didn’t rank this one), and Talenti.

After we’d stuffed ourselves with bánh mì at our January taste-off, we moved on to gelato. For an even playing field, we stuck with just one flavor, pistachio. With the same set of judges and ranking method as our sandwich taste-off, and only four gelati (hm – gelati, gelatos, gelatoes – nothing looks correct in an English sentence…), the best possible score was 9 and the worst was 36.

	4th place: This high-end grocery store gelato was a bright, almost fake green sitting next to the others. Talenti gelato tasted a bit artificial, too, and the texture was icy. While it had the biggest chunks of pistachio of the bunch, which initially seemed like an advantage, the nuts were soft and mealy. More than half ranked this at the bottom, giving it an overall score of 30.
	3rd place: Bottega Italiana’s gelato was creamy in texture but sweeter than our ultimate favorite. The primary complaint here was that it doesn’t taste much like pistachio. Instead, it’s more like brown sugar in flavor and color. Yummy, but pistachio should taste like pistachio. Score: 26.
	2nd place: It was basically a toss-up between the middle two gelati, with Fainting Goat Gelato garnering just one point more than our 3rd place choice. Fainting Goat’s version was not nutty and not particularly distinct, and some felt they’d be hard-pressed to identify it as pistachio in a line-up.
	1st place: The title of D’Ambrosio Gelato’s web site says “Seattle’s Best Italian Gelato” and we agree. Unanimously. It’s a rare occasion when nine of us agree on a winner (9 points!), so we can definitively say this is the best of the bunch we tried. Intense nutty pistachio flavor, with a great texture and tiny pieces of nuts throughout. Some detected a hint of salt that enhanced the flavor of the pistachio. I personally would recommend any of the flavors at D’Ambrosio and highly recommend a trip over to Ballard (or Casa d’Italia!) for a sampling.

As with all of our taste-offs, we don’t provide any particular criteria for the judging, yet when we discussed the results afterwards, we found we had pretty similar ideas of what makes a great bánh mì.

It turned out that a well-balanced bite of jalapeño often nudged a sandwich forward in an individual’s rankings. What we discovered, however, was that the “spiciest sandwich” varied wildly depending on which bite of each sandwich you took. The bánh mì that I found to have the most heat was deemed bland by another, who found that the spiciest sandwich in their ranking contained no jalapeño’s on someone else’s plate.

But a great bánh mì is clearly not just about the heat. Bread is key. A traditional bánh mì is served on a light crisp baguette, where the bread and exterior crunch are well-balanced with the filling inside.

In a good sandwich, that filling is often pork (our choice for this tasting) with a nice balance of acid from crunchy pickled carrots, daikon, and cucumber, along with some fresh sprigs of cilantro, and a swipe of mayo.

For those not familiar with our rating system, this was a blind taste-off, with an arbitrary letter assigned to each sandwich for identification. Each person independently stack ranked them, from their most to least favorite.

One point was given when a sandwich was the top of someone’s list, a second choice sandwich received two points, all the way on down the list. So with nine tasters for our five sandwiches, the best possible score is 9 (when everyone ranks it top on their list) and the worst possible score is 45 (all nine people rank it 5th on their list).

So without further ado, here are the results.

	5th place: The cheapest of our sandwiches was the $2.50 bánh mì from Seattle Deli. It ranked as high as 2nd on a couple of lists, but it also had the most last place rankings, garnering a score of 35. While it got points for tender meat, several had complaints about the bread: too much of it vs. the filling, and no crunch to the crust. And most of our test sandwiches were bland, without much mayo or pickling in the veggies.
	4th place: A gentrified interpretation of bánh mì, this $9 sandwich was from Madison Park Conservatory. We were curious how a high end version from a restaurant would rank against the more traditional deli sandwich, and it turned out to be difficult to stack rank since it’s not apples to apples. Several said that in a general sandwich ranking, it might have placed higher, but it was lacking the elements considered critical for a good bánh mì. Here, the bread was soft potato bread instead of a crunchy baguette, the veggies were soft and not very pickled, and there wasn’t enough overall heat. But the pork belly! This is what brought rankings as high as 2 on a couple people’s lists. Juicy, rich, and oh-so-porky, this is what the sandwich was all about. Score: 31.
	3rd place: Only one point ahead of Madison Park Conservatory, the Saigon Deli sandwich got the whole range of rankings, 1-5. This $2.75 bánh mì had the crunchiest roll, which several people liked, and the pork flavor was good. But the distribution of jalapeño was uneven, making this the spiciest on one list and the blandest on another. By far the biggest complaint was too much mayo, pulling it down to a score of 30.
	2nd place: A number of tasters gave big points to Yeh Yeh’s Sandwiches for the bread, which was crunchy and crackly outside and soft inside. The pickled veggies were tasty alongside the meat, but they weren’t very well-balanced, since whoever made the sandwich had a heavy hand with the pickles. This was the biggest factor pulling it out of a first place ranking, giving it a final score of 22. Price tag: $3.50.
	1st place: With two-thirds of us ranking this as their favorite, the bánh mì from Pho Cyclo Café sat clearly above the rest with a score of 15. It had a great pickled crunch with a nice amount of fresh cilantro, and the sweetest meat of all the sandwiches we tried. Most felt it had the best overall balance of flavor and just the right amount of heat, making it a huge value at $3.

And our conclusion? A second taste-off of pistachio gelato for dessert. We found a rare unanimous winner. Stay tuned…

So it was decided.  There would be a baguette taste-off.  Here were today’s contenders:

• Bakery Nouveau
• Columbia City Bakery
• The Essential Baking Company
• Grand Central Baking Company
• La Brea Bakery
• Macrina Bakery & Café
• Tall Grass Bakery

We considered others, too:  the newly opened Le Rêve Bakery (not selling baguettes yet), Dahlia Bakery (missed out due to morning-of technical difficulties), Boulangerie Nantaise, Le Panier, Le Fournil, and the list goes on.  But remember the “don’t overdo it” part?

Four couples joined our hosts Kye Soon Hong and Eric Vigessa today:  Catherine Reynolds and Ken O’Hara, Lorna Yee and Henry Lo, Rebekah Denn and David Dickey, along with Eric and me.

You may already be familiar with our rating system, but I’ll reiterate it here:

This was a blind taste-off, with an arbitrary letter assigned to each baguette for identification.  We ate them sans accoutrements for the taste-off, and each person independently stack ranked them, from their most to least favorite.

A baguette was given one point when it was the top of someone’s list, a second choice baguette received two points, all the way on down the list.  So with ten tasters for our seven baguettes, the best possible score is 10 (i.e. when everyone ranks it top on their list) and the worst possible score is 70 (all ten people rank it 7th on their list).

We wound up with three clusters of bakeries in our results:  5th, 6th, and 7th were very close, then we jump up to the 3rd and 4th place rankings, and finally, the 1st and 2nd place winners, which were only two points apart!

	7th place: Over half ranked the baguette from La Brea last, giving it an overall score of 61.  However, this grocery store baguette didn’t take the more unanimous last place of our croissant ringer, because a few felt that it had a better crunchy crust and soft interior than the worst of the bakery baguettes.
	6th place: Macrina didn’t have a good showing today.  Their baguette was the palest of the bunch, with a bubbly crust, and had very little textural contrast between the interior and exterior.  For the most part, it was in the bottom three on people’s lists, garnering a total score of 58.
	5th place: Essential got points for a caramelized crust, but many thought it was too dark, almost burnt in spots, and the baguette overall was tough.  The interior was the least traditional of the lot, with a darker wheat crumb, the sourest flavor, and none of the large airy holes inside that people favored in the higher ranking baguettes.  Its overall score was 50.
	4th place: Here we enter the next clustering of baguette scores.  Seven of the ten of us ranked Tall Grass’s baguette 3rd, but the others’ lower rankings pushed it down to a score of 37.  One of those who ranked it lower gave it a “low crumb rating” and several felt that it had a simple, uninteresting flavor.
	3rd place: Grand Central’s bread got higher accolades for the flavor and had a toasty brown crust, but the exterior was too hard for some.  With blunt ends, this wasn’t a traditional shaped pointy baguette like our top two finishers.  This one had the widest range of rankings, landing everywhere except last on people’s lists, giving it a final rating of 34.
	2nd place: There were opinionated discussions about the top two results, and it seemed to come down to either texture or flavor.  Many preferred the complex flavor of the 2nd place Nouveau’s baguette.  But while four felt that it was a winner across the board, others didn’t like the texture as much as our winner.  The color of this baguette was a beautiful golden brown.  Its overall score was 21.
	And our winner, by a hair: Columbia City Bakery, with 19 points!  All but one placed it in their top two, and most felt Columbia City’s baguette was the closest to the ideal baguette texture, with a crisp exterior and a moist, elastic, chewy interior.

So tell me, what is your favorite baguette?  And what should be our next taste-off?  Bagels?  Cupcakes?  Even teriyaki has been suggested.

And if you missed any of our past taste-offs, you can find them here:

• Doughnuts
• Croissants
• Stumptown vs. Zoka coffee beans

We retrieved doughnuts from all ends of the city and convened on Father’s Day morning for a taste-off of epic proportions.  If you thought four dozen croissants was excessive, try eleven dozen doughnuts in the same room.  Perhaps it was an ambitious plan.

The Contenders

Family Donut Shop.  An unassuming strip mall shop in the Northgate area is where those in the know stop for their sugar-rush, whether it’s a fritter, cruller, or a basic raised.

Frost Doughnuts.  Open for less than a year, this is the youngest doughnut shop in our taste-off, offering sophisticated creations out of their boutique shop in Mill Creek.  The shop is so popular that they are rumored to be looking for a second location closer to Seattle.

King Donuts.  They sell teriyaki and doughnuts next to a Maytag Laundromat in Rainier Beach.  Needless to say, we were curious to see what kind of doughnuts are baked in a place like this.  Teriyaki doughnuts while you wait for your last load to finish spinning?

Krispy Kreme Doughnuts.  The Original Glazed Krispy Kreme was popular across the country before they opened three stores in the Seattle area, including the SODO location where we picked up fresh glazed doughnuts for our taste-off.

Mighty-O Donuts.  Organic vegan doughnuts might make you imagine a tofu ring covered in glaze, but you would be hard-pressed to identify their doughnut as vegan in a line-up.  While the bakery is situated in Wallingford, you can also find these doughnuts in high-end area grocery stores like Whole Foods and Madison Market.

Original Bakery.  Open for decades, this neighborhood favorite in West Seattle is our oldest taste-off contender.  They sell no-frills doughnuts and other home style bakery items to go with your coffee at this friendly family-owned shop.

Top Pot Doughnuts.  Top Pot’s “hand-forged” doughnuts are in such demand that they’ve now got six brick-and-mortar shops, along with an Airstream mobile unit, plus a presence at our own Qwest field and in Starbucks across the country.  The doughnuts for this taste-off came from their original location in north Capitol Hill.

Lara Ferroni’s homemade doughnuts.  How do homemade doughnuts stack up against the very best doughnut shops in Seattle?  Lara made us a few batches from her soon-to-be-published Doughnuts cookbook, which is scheduled to hit bookstores this fall.  No fancy, professional bakery equipment here; just a stovetop pot and thermometer.  We should note for our taste test that only two of the twelve people judging knew that there were homemade doughnuts in the mix, so the doughnuts were judged as if they were from a professional bakery.

The Judges

Six couples, three kids, two babies, plus one on the way gathered after some self-imposed carb fasting.  Those with voting rights were our hosts Kye Soon Hong and Eric Vigessa, along with Catherine Reynolds and Ken O’Hara, Laurie and Matthew Amster-Burton, Rebekah Denn and David Dickey, Michael and Robin Bruchas, plus yours truly.

Revealing the results

The Ranking Method

This was a blind taste taste, with an arbitrary letter assigned to each doughnut for identification.  Each person independently stack ranked them, from their most to least favorite.

A doughnut was given one point when it was the top of someone’s list, a second choice doughnut received two points, all the way on down the list.  So if there are seven doughnuts, the best possible score is 12 (i.e. when everyone ranks it top on their list) and the worst possible score is 84 (all twelve people rank it 7th on their list).

The Categories

We decided that the only way to make a fair comparison between shops was to compare the same kind of doughnut from each place.  However, it was tough to whittle the playing field so that we could avoid each person having to eat dozens of different doughnuts on a single morning. (I know, you’re asking, how is that a bad thing?)

To focus our attention on the doughnut recipe, we stuck with the quintessential plain cake and glazed raised doughnuts as our categories.  This meant we’d only have to try around a dozen different doughnuts, which should be no problem, right?

But then we got tempted by all of the other doughnut possibilities.  Apple fritter?  Buttermilk bar?  Bismark?  How could we ignore each doughnut shop’s specialty?  In the end, we decided a third category might be disastrous, but we would allow a specialty doughnut flavor from each shop, which people could taste, but these doughnuts would not be part of the judging.

The Plain Cake Doughnut

A plain cake might not be the doughnut that you choose when you’re distracted by chocolate, maple glaze, sprinkles, and jelly.  But it’s an important doughnut because it tells you a lot about the bakery.  What is the flavor of the oil they use for frying?  Is the cake dense or light?  What kind of crumb?  Is it fried with a crunchy or soft exterior?

And besides, sometimes a plain doughnut is all that will do for dunking into your coffee.  And in case you’re wondering, no, Dunkin’ Donuts was not a participant in our taste-off, since they closed all west coast outposts a couple years ago.  Krispy Kreme was the only one of our contenders that didn’t participate in this category, because let’s be real here: which doughnut do you buy when you go to Krispy Kreme?

	7th place: A majority ranked Mighty-O’s doughnut dead last, due to the off-flavor (excessive baking soda and the taste of corn oil?) and lack of crunch to the crust.  With a uniform texture throughout, it was uninteresting and bland, garnering a score of 74.
	6th place: Top Pot was all over the map, landing everywhere except in the number one spot on the stack rankings.  But the median score was 5, giving it an overall rating of 53.  The texture on this doughnut was bready with no crunchy crust, and some felt that it was oily, with a strong nutmeg or clove flavor.
	5th place: With only a point advantage over 6th place (52), Frost had a score distribution similar to Top Pot.  This is a very sweet doughnut that seemed bland to some, and like Mighty-O and Top Pot, it had a soft exterior with no crunch.
	4th place: The rankings for Family Donut ran the gamut.  It might have placed better if it hadn’t been fried in slightly rancid old oil, since it was crunchy with a good open crumb.  Overall, it received a score of 48.
	3rd place: Homemade doughnuts did well in our taste-test, yielding two first-place votes and an overall score of 46.  The crust was crisp, which was an important criteria for most in the cake category, and there was a good crumb with a subtle nutmeg flavor.
	2nd place: The sweet, cakelike doughnut from King Donuts made it into the top two slots in half of our stack rankings.  Its score was 35.  The nutmeg was well balanced and while many liked the texture and crunch, a few felt that it was a bit too fluffy.
	1st place: Original Bakery was the clear winner with a majority voting the cake doughnut as their favorite.  The crunchy crust and light interior made this the perfect doughnut for many.  This doughnut had a slightly unique (some called it citrusy) flavor to it, unlike the customary nutmeg flavor.  Was it cinnamon?  However, there were a few who didn’t go for the non-traditional flavor of this doughnut, resulting in a score of 28.

Raised Glazed

Raised dough is a canvas for many people’s favorite doughnuts: jelly-filled, maple bars, bismarks, and the ever-classic raised glazed.

This category was harder to judge than the cake category.  A few people mentioned that they thought only the top few cake doughnuts were worth eating, whereas they would be happy eating any of the raised doughnuts, including the lower ranked ones.  The rankings here were based more on subtle nuances, although the highest ranked tended to be doughnuts that had an airy soft interior with a touch of crunch on the edges.

Mighty-O doesn’t make a raised glazed, so didn’t participate in this category, and we were unfortunately unable to include Top Pot’s ring for this tasting.  Next time.

	6th place: Homemade doughnuts did not fare as well in this round as in the previous round.  Raised doughnuts can be tricky to make without professional equipment like a proof box, and some felt that they tasted a bit yeasty and not as sweet as the others.  The overall score was 69.
	5th place: Half ranked the Frost Doughnut fifth on their stack ranking, but the rest placed it higher.  The resulting score of 44 put it marginally behind the next couple doughnuts.  This doughnut was more cakey than the higher ranked doughnuts, and some felt that it, too, was yeasty.
	4th place: With a very sweet dough, Krispy Kreme’s Original Glazed doughnut was no one’s favorite, rating an overall score of 42.  It was uniformly soft and had a shiny thick glaze.  And yes, our Krispy Kremes were eaten at room temperature, just like all the other doughnuts.
	3rd place: Family Donut had four first place votes, but the rest of the votes spanned the entire range, pulling it down to a score of 39.  This doughnut was fairly sweet and if it didn’t have a slight old-oil flavor similar to their raised, it might have placed higher.
	2nd place: Half of the people placed Original Bakery’s doughnut in their top two, and a couple said this was a clear winner above the rest.  This sweet doughnut had a strong nutmeg flavor and a bit of a crunch to the edges that people liked.  The overall rating was 35.
	1st place: The King Donut was far and away the favorite, with nearly everyone placing it into their top three, and five ranking it their favorite.  It came in with a score of 23.  The doughnut had a good all-around flavor and sweetness, plus a great soft texture.  With so many favoring this doughnut, it makes me wonder if their teriyaki is as good.

Specialty Doughnuts

As a way to showcase the best of each bakery, everyone brought in a specialty doughnut to taste.  The red velvet from Frost was beautiful and with cream cheese frosting to boot.  Mighty-O’s raspberry lemon poppy seed was soft and tangy.  Lara supplied cute sugared twists and doughnut holes that were the perfect small bites.  And we could see why the bismark from Original Bakery has a loyal following.

I even tried my own hand at doughnuts, using Lara’s German chocolate recipe, and for my first homemade doughnuts ever, I was pretty pleased with the results.  Since they were easy to make, and I saved the used fry oil in my fridge, I’d like to try her banana doughnuts next.  Or maybe the ricotta fritters.

Then there were the apple fritters.  Nobody knew who was bringing which specialty doughnuts, so we didn’t plan to have four different apple fritters.  But perhaps it shouldn’t be much of a surprise, with this being a classic favorite.  So we set up the plates for a spontaneous third taste-off.

Apple Fritter

One of our judges almost defected from her job when she heard that she would need to judge another round, but she rallied for the last four doughnuts.

There seemed to be two camps to the apple fritter lovers: some like the crunchy edges and others prefer the soft inside.  Since the fritters were each very different from one another, this resulted in voting being pretty scattered among the fritters, with one clear favorite.

	4th place: The fritter from Top Pot Doughnuts was very traditional-looking in shape, with quite a bit of soft interior and a thick coating of glaze.  The edges were somewhat crunchy, and several thought the whole thing was too sweet.  As with every doughnut in this category, the votes spanned the whole range, although the Top Pot fritter was last on half our rankings.  The overall score was 34.
	Tie for 2nd place: The two fritters taking second could not have looked and tasted more different from one another.  The one from King Donuts was a regular-shaped soft puffy square, with lots of apple bits, while the one from Frost Doughnuts was a crunchy maze of crazy-shaped dough drizzled with caramel.  Nearly everyone gave these two fritters a 2nd or 3rd place ranking, leaving them with a tied score of 31.
	1st place: The flattest fritter with the crunchiest edges was from Family Donut Shop.  This one was a deep caramel-colored brown, and preferred by a majority of our judges, coming in with a score of 24.

Our conclusion was that doughnut judging is a lot more difficult than croissants.  With so many variations on even the standard recipe, not to mention the toppings and flavors that we didn’t even touch, the type of doughnut you like and consider the “best” may very well be quite different from mine, or our judging here.

But we did discover two things.  One: there are a lot of good doughnuts hiding in nooks and crannies of this city, certainly more than we tasted on this morning.  Any suggestions for other favorites we should try?  And two: we will never again try to taste 22 different doughnuts in a single morning.

The carnage

What should we taste-test next?  Cupcakes?  Baguettes?

Eight of us were tasked with scouting the city to retrieve croissants for our taste-off this morning.  We paired up, fanned out around Seattle, and came together at Kye and Eric’s house with croissants, jam, and coffee beans (for our separate coffee taste-off) in hand.

Kye secretly labeled each of the croissants with letters so we only had appearance and taste to go off.  Each couple split one croissant from each of seven different bakeries, and we had to stack-rank the following bakeries:

• Bakery Nouveau
• Cafe Besalu
• Columbia City Bakery
• Costco Bakery
• Honoré Artisan Bakery
• Le Fournil
• Sweet & Savory

We summed the rankings to arrive at an overall ranking across our group of eight people (e.g. the best possible score for a croissant was 8, if everyone ranked it first on their list, and the worst possible score was 56 if everyone ranked the croissant seventh on their list).  Note, although I’ve mentioned prices in the results, prices were not known until the rankings were revealed at the end, so did not influence the results.

	7th place: Although there were some interesting surprises in the results, no one was surprised that the grocery store croissant from Costco ranked lowest, with a score of 56 (meaning we universally considered it the worst).  It was an unappetizing pale color, and larger than the others, with absolutely no crunch to the soft exterior. Not even worth the $0.35 price tag.
	6th place: Many were surprised that Le Fournil, generally regarded as a good bakery, ranked so low (although the competition here was admittedly fierce).  With a score of 40, it garnered comments that it had a slightly sour taste, was fairly flat in flavor, and didn’t even look like a traditional croissant since it was so big.  It was inexpensive vs. the higher-ranked croissants, at only $1.45.
	5th place: It was a bad day for Honoré Bakery.  Their very-dark croissants were clearly overbaked today, with many saying that it had a slightly burnt flavor.  Although it garnered one ranking as high as second, its overall score was 33.  The price was right in line with the going rate for good croissants in Seattle: $2.25.
	4th place: The appearance of the croissant from Sweet & Savory seemed to rank it lower than some of the others, with a score of 31.  While the flavor was quite good and buttery, the exterior didn’t have the nice crunch some were looking for, and it had a flat tan color instead of the golden color of the best croissants on our list.  Some commented that it didn’t quite look like a croissant.  And with a price tag of $3 it was definitely not a bargain.
	3rd place:  Columbia City Bakery had a decent croissant for $2.25, with a toasty buttery flavor, not as sweet as some.  It was the most symmetrical, evenly colored croissant of the bunch, although apparently that bakery had heard that their croissants would be part of a taste test, so that may have biased the appearance.  The exterior was nice and crunchy, but there were fewer layers inside than others.  Overall, it received a score of 30.
	2nd place: First and second place were very close.  The results were interesting because our second place croissant from Cafe Besalu garnered the most (five) first place votes, but since it was almost too buttery for some, with a lot of air inside, a few lower rankings pulled it down to a total score of 19.  Those who liked it commented that they absolutely loved the butter flavor.  This, too, had a price of $2.25.
	And our winner… Bakery Nouveau!  With a score of 15, it was the most universally liked.  Seven out of eight of us had it in our top two.  This croissant ranked with many as the best looking, with more layers than any other croissant, and a nice buttery, slightly sweet flavor that no one felt swayed too far in any direction.  And with a price of $2.25, it was right in line with the other well-liked croissants in town.

The tasty conclusion

Stumptown, based out of Portland, is the current darling of the coffee roasting world.  In addition to five coffee shops scattered around Portland, they opened up two coffee bars in Seattle in the past year-and-a-half, and now have their sights on the NYC market.  The New York Post even gave their beans (served at Momofuku Milk Bar) a “Post pick” earlier this month over several serious contenders.

Zoka is a much smaller roasting operation based in Seattle, with two popular coffeehouse hangouts in the city and a third in Kirkland.  In addition to their wide range of coffee beans, Zoka has a nice selection of high-quality teas and decent baked goods in their cafés.

We compared three freshly-roasted beans from each roaster:

Sumatra: Stumptown’s Blue Batak vs. Zoka’s Lake Tawar
Ethiopia: Stumptown’s Wondo vs. Zoka’s Sidamo
Costa Rica: Stumptown’s Don Mayo vs. Zoka’s Helsar de Zarcero

This was a single blind tasting – our non-coffee-drinking administrator assigned a letter to each region and a number 1 or 2 to the roaster, which was randomly chosen for each region (that is, “roaster 1” in the first round did not necessarily match “roaster 1” in the second round).  The participants sampled five-minute French press brews, one region at a time.

The result was surprising to all of us: Zoka crushed Stumptown across the board, with zero votes for Stumptown!  Zoka’s Sumatra was nutty and its aroma immediately reminded me of a favorite coffee I’ve had in Europe, whereas the Stumptown Sumatra was too acidic with little aroma.  The Ethiopia brews were distinctly different, with the classic blueberry flavors coming through clearly in Zoka’s roast, while Stumptown’s offering seemed muted and again too acidic.  The Costa Rica beans were the only ones where everyone agreed the difference was subtle, and yet all votes swayed toward Zoka.

Finally, we ranked our favorites across the regions:

3. Costa Rica Helsar de Zarcero
2. Sumatra Lake Tawar
1. Ethiopia Sidamo

I think this warrants several follow-up competitions.  Victrola vs. Caffe Vita?  Zeitgeist vs. Lighthouse?  Zoka vs. Blue Bottle?  The possibilities are tantalizing.  Post your favorite roasters, and we’ll see about organizing more face-offs.

University Zoka
2901 NE Blakeley St, Seattle
(206) 527-0990

Stumptown Coffee
1115 12th Ave, Seattle
(206) 323-1544

The chocolates we wanted to compare are Valrhona Manjari 64%, and Guittard Coucher du Soleil 72%.  On their own, they’re both good, but I like the Valrhona better because it has the hints of cherry that I really like.  But would we be able to tell the difference in brownies?

To make it a true A / B experiment, I used the same eggs, butter, vanilla, etc., and I baked them side-by-side in the oven, switching sides halfway through baking.

The result is a super fudgy moist brownie – exactly what I was hoping for!  So could we tell the difference?  Well, the Valrhona brownie had a slightly brighter chocolate flavor, while the Guittard has a bit deeper intense chocolate flavor.  But the difference is subtle.  No matter, because it turns out this recipe is awesome!  This is definitely going to be my brownie recipe of choice from now on.

We’ll be bringing a half pan of each batch to Chocolopolis tomorrow morning for Lauren to try.  If you’re reading this and would like to try the taste test for yourself, head on up to her store, ask for my brownies, and she’ll give you a sample of each.  The thing that isn’t mentioned in the Saveur issue but is mentioned on David’s blog is that brownies improve after sitting for a day or two.  Lauren says 3-4 days is even better which is why she told me she’ll keep them on hand until Wednesday, if they’re not gone before then.  If you’re planning on stopping by, note that the store is closed Mondays.  Report back here on what you think!