the daily - Hampton Coffee Company

grind
THE DAILY
DISCERNING HAMPTONS COFFEE AFICIONADOS
ARE FINDING NEW WAYS TO SATE THEIR
PALATES WITH ARTISANAL LOCAL BREWS.
BY SYLVIE BIGAR PHOTOGRAPHY BY DOUG YOUNG
T
The Hamptons coffee scene
includes a global array of
beans and brewing techniques,
offered by local purveyors
such as Shane Dyckman (top
right) at Sagtown Coffee and
Theresa and Jason Belkin
(bottom middle) at Hampton
Coffee Company.
ales of my European parents’ 1969 road
trip from Pennsylvania to California resonated throughout my childhood. With
reverence, they recounted the immensity of the
American sky, the contrasting landscapes, and
the kindness of people along the route. There
was also the atrocious coffee “the color of dirty
sock juice,” as my father was fond of saying.
Our daily cuppa joe has come a long way.
Surrounded by a caffeine cloud in Hampton
Coffee Company’s brand-new roasting room
in Southampton, co-owner Jason Belkin, a
stout, blue-eyed dynamo, is giving his
abbreviated version of coffee history 101.
“We’re into the Third Wave of coffee
enthusiasts,” he says, referring to the term
coined by Michaele Weissman in her book God
in a Cup: The Obsessive Quest for the Perfect Coffee
(Houghton Mifflin Harcourt). “First Wave
happened around the Maxwell/Folgers swell at
the beginning of the 20th century.”
With obvious disgust, he recounts how
boiled water used to be thrown over the coffee.
It was the era of Sanka and the percolator.
“Then came the Second Wave with the
Starbucks invasion,” he continues. “It’s almost
impossible to remember that 20 years ago,
there was only one on Long Island. People
were asking, ‘What’s a latte?’”
It was also 20 years ago that Hampton
Coffee, then a small diner by the side of the
road in Water Mill, opened its doors. Soon
after, Belkin, a journalism student, walked in
looking for the summer job that, unbeknownst
to him, would lead to his life’s calling.
“Today, the Third Wave hails again from
Seattle,” he says. “It brought us the ‘pour-over
bar’ with hand-brewed coffee, one cup at a time.”
Besides Hampton Coffee, several other
local establishments are riding this Third
Wave of coffee connoisseurship, including
Sagtown Coffee (78 Main St., Sag Harbor, 7258696; sagtown.com), which fits in well with the
intellectual, artsy vibe of Sag Harbor. It was
standing-room only on a recent Thursday
afternoon, and all the required items on the
décor checklist were in evidence, namely
reclaimed wood beams from a Tribeca site
and two carved wooden lions from Burma by
way of Brooklyn.
“I really wanted to create a community
center,” says owner Shane Dyckman, still tan
from a surfing vacation. Even though he
curates events that range from pumpkin
carving contests to open-mike sessions and
“Troubadour Nights” featuring live music, he
also feels very strongly about the coffee he
serves. “Before we opened two years ago, we
HAMPTONS-MAGAZINE.COM 241
above: Shane Dyckman
researched coffee beans for
nine months before
selecting La Colombe
blends for Sagtown Coffee.
below: Hampton Coffee
Company roastmaster
Dwight Amade mans one of
the roasting machines at the
Southampton location.
242 HAMPTONS-MAGAZINE.COM
researched coffee for nine months and chose La
Colombe,” he says, referring to the Philadelphia
company that specializes in light-roasted, singleorigin coffee and handcrafted blends but also
offers “coffee programs,” tailored to each client.
“I will not pretend I know coffee as it
exists now,” says Mary Schoenlein, owner
of Mary’s Marvelous in East Hampton (105–
107 Newtown Lane, East Hampton, 324-1055;
marysmarvelous.com). As a chef, she trained in
New York and in France, and everything from
her crumbly cheddar-dill scones to the roasted
chicken curry salad she offers in her bright,
contemporary stores is homemade and delicious.
But to keep up with Hamptonites’ sophisticated
tastes, Schoenlein had to up the level of her coffee
and chose her beans from 100-year-old company
Dallis Bros. Coffee. “Coffee is hip and trendy,”
she says. “It’s on fire right now.”
The Third Wave also elevated the status of
the barista (Italian for bartender) to the level of
the celebrity chef. Behind the counter at
Sagtown, barista Adrian Stivala crafts gourmet
beans for such local coffee aficionados as
commercial artist John LaSala. “I am of Italian
descent,” says Stivala, whose very first job was
behind a Starbucks counter. “I was brought up
with cappuccinos.” The barista first came to
Sagtown as a client, then started going behind
the counter to make his own coffee; it wasn’t
long until he was hired.
Schoenlein also hired baristas, including Isch
Michel, a Starbucks alum. “We don’t roast as
dark,” Michel says of the cups served at Mary’s
Marvelous. “Here, coffee complements the
pastries; at Starbucks it’s the other way around.”
But at Hampton Coffee, which is Long
Island’s largest independent roaster-retailer, the
“We cannot compete
with Starbucks, so we
need to differentiate.”
—jason belkin
barista shares the spotlight with roastmaster
Dwight Amade. Standing next to his coffee
roaster, a massive, shiny machine reminiscent
of a steam locomotive, Amade watches the
beans revolving around the smoker with the
intensity of an artist bent over his canvas.
“Look,” he cries, “the smoke travels all the
way, like a dance.”
Amade was born in Grenada and grew up on
a cocoa farm. “I remember my late grandfather
Maurice roasting beans on an open flame,” he
says, his eyes suddenly misty.
Nearby on the f loor, stamped burlap bags
are redolent of distant mountains and shores.
“Each bag comes from a different country,
and each origin has a different shape, color,
and taste,” Amade explains, sifting small,
greenish beans from Tanzania that seemed to
ache for water. “Hawaii produces larger,
darker beans because of its volcanic soil and
rain-drenched slopes.”
While the formula for Hampton Coffee’s
Hampton Blends is a secret—“That’s our thing,”
teases Amade—the blend’s popularity has
attracted enough of a following that Belkin has
since opened a third location on Route 27 in
Southampton; meaning Belkin and his wife,
Theresa, now own three espresso cafés and a
mobile espresso unit. Within the next five years,
A hand-crafted Caffe’ Latte
prepared by a barista at
Hampton Coffee Company.
HAMPTONS-MAGAZINE.COM 243
he plans to open three more. Is this another
Howard Schultz in the making? “We cannot
compete with Starbucks, so we need to
differentiate,” says Belkin, who, with the help of
his family, purchased Hampton Coffee in 1999,
when he was just 24.
One way Belkin sets Hampton Coffee apart
is by touting the fact that his coffee is roasted
almost every day. “Beans start losing flavor
immediately after roasting,” he says. He
recommends purchasing small amounts of
coffee more frequently; he would rather deliver
10 pounds a week to a restaurant wholesale
customer than have them buy four times that
amount to last for an entire month.
Coffee farmer Ric Hariyanto from Sumatra,
Indonesia, is the man behind some of the beans
currently tumbling in Amade’s roaster. “My
family used to pick the cherries [a trade name for
the coffee beans], dry them, process them, and
bring them to the middlemen,” he says, calling
from his village in Indonesia. “I started thinking
we could export our own coffee.”
It helped that Hariyanto had gone to college in
the US and, as he put it, “learned that every
problem has a solution.” Four years ago, he
created his own company, Sriwijaya Coffee, and
last year sold close to 3,000 bags directly—
including those to Hampton Coffee, which he
visited earlier this year. “It was incredible to
meet one of our coffee farmers,” says Belkin. “It
“Ten years ago,
we were the first
to introduce organic,
fair trade, and
shade-grown coffee.”
—jack mazzola
Hampton Coffee Company’s
Bean Bar offers an international
array of beans, including
varieties from Tanzania, Hawaii,
Guatemala, Costa Rica, Mexico,
and Colombia, so customers
can create their own blends.
244 HAMPTONS-MAGAZINE.COM
right: Baristas at Hampton
Coffee Company use a paper
filter and ground Direct Trade
Sumatra beans for a slow
brew drip coffee at the Pour
Over Bar in Southampton, the
first one on the East End.
made our experience completely personal.”
Jack Mazzola, owner of the hip Jack’s Stir
Brew Coffee (146 Montauk Hwy., Amagansett,
267-5555; jacksstirbrew.com) and inventor of the
stir brewer, pioneered this kind of grower-roaster
relationship. “Ten years ago, we were the first to
introduce organic, fair trade, and shade-grown
coffee,” he says, and thanks to his relationship
with American-Dominican writer and coffee
farmer Julia Alvarez, Mazzola is also part owner
of a coffee farm in the Dominican Republic.
“Jack’s is a destination,” he says referring to his
coffee house in Amagansett, which, on weekend
mornings draws huge crowds, both for his coffee
and for his organic, vegan, and gluten-free
bakery items. “I am not looking to expand. This
is where we are.”
Back at Hampton Coffee, I order a cup of
farmer Ric Hariyanto’s Sriwijaya Sumatra Dolok
Sanggul. I peer into an elixir as dark as onyx and
sip the clean, bold coffee little by little. Throughout
researching this story, I have glimpsed the
pressures of the global trade and the efforts of the
farmers who spend their lives picking, hulling,
and drying the beans we take for granted. But as
part of this Third Wave, a group of coffee
aficionados in the Hamptons and elsewhere are
changing the way we think. Today, thanks to
their passion, we can reach out to the men and
women who work the coffee fields and attempt to
bridge our two worlds. H
BLEND FOR
A CAUSE
Coming to Hampton Coffee Company this
Memorial Day weekend is the Hamptons
Magazine Blend, a mix of Costa Rican
Tarrazu, Colombian Supremo, and
Sumatran beans purchased through direct
trade from a village cooperative in
Indonesia. A portion of the proceeds from
the sale of the blend will go to East End
Hospice’s Camp Good Grief (eeh.org/
campgoodgrief.html). Roastmaster
Dwight Amade oversaw the research
process at the company’s Southampton
coffee roastery before blind-sampling
three brews and making the final
selection: a smooth and medium-rich
blend, perfect when served over ice by
the pool. “Hamptons magazine and
Hampton Coffee Company are the ideal
summer matchup,” says Hampton Coffee
Company co-owner Jason Belkin. “Both
are very involved in local community
programs and both have become
Hamptons institutions.” 749 County
Road 39A, Southampton, 358-3088;
869 Montauk Hwy., Water Mill, 726-2633;
194 Mill Road, Westhampton Beach,
288-4480; hamptoncoffeecompany.com.
Read more on hamptons-magazine.com/
dining—erin riley
HAMPTONS-MAGAZINE.COM 245