in a good way." I see evidence of this first-hand when, about halfway through my conversation with Bell at Grumpy, Katie Carguilo walks in and joins us. The recently crowned Northeast barista cham- pion works at Counter Culture's New York City offices, but she regularly stops in at cafés throughout the city. At one point in our conversation, Carguilo offers a com- ment that seems to sum up the city's cof- fee scene. "You can get a cup of coffee on every single corner of New York City at a deli," she says. "How amazing would it be if on every single corner it was decent and sustainably sourced coffee?"
THE SUNNY OUTLOOK OF SOCAL Let us move now from the urban grit
of the Big Apple to the coastal climes of Santa Monica. The year was 1990, and L.A. native Richard Karno had recently opened the doors of the Novel Café. The son of a well-known book dealer, Karno's business was part-bookstore, part coffee shop. But his focus changed fast. "I started realizing that the books were not the real economic prize of my business," he says. "It was the coffee." Karno's business eventually became
Groundwork Coffee, a roaster-retailer that now has seven L.A.-area locations. Last year, Groundwork merged with Supreme Bean Coffee Roasters, which took over the company's wholesale business. Supreme Bean was started by another L.A. native, Jeff Chean, who says the early-'90s Los Angeles coffee scene was short on inde- pendents. "Richard was there, Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf was there, and Starbucks was just entering the market," he says. Coffee lovers now enjoy an abundance of
top-quality roasting companies and ultra- chic cafés. Integral to this transition was the arrival of Intelligentsia Coffee, which launched a location in 2006 in the trendy Silver Lake neighborhood and now has two additional Southern California cafés. Months after Intelligentsia's first L.A. shop opened, Lamill Coffee also started in Silver Lake, offering seven tableside extraction methods. "It seems as if things
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