Standing in line on a crowded sidewalk with brass bands playing during October’s Honk! festival (its 21st annual event!) in Davis Square, I get an adrenaline rush even before I sip my coffee. Okay, so this isn’t a café in our usual sense, a place to sit and sip and be social, a worker or a people-watcher. It’s Nine Bar, a spin-off from the beloved Simon’s down Massachusetts Avenue, and we come for the coffee. It became a street window with no indoor seating during the Covid pandemic, yet still has quite a following.
It’s one of those places where waiting in the queue inspires conversation, especially on the street during Honk, when everyone’s alert to costumes and political signage and whatever is written on T-shirts. No one is in a hurry for the coffee, and everyone is enjoying the party. But even on a un-Honk! day, picking up a coffee at Nine Bar is not just a takeout-and-walk-away stop. Many sippers stay to hang out on the sidewalk and talk, not rush off with coffees; many don’t even take a cap for their capp. One visitor was heard to say “I can’t help feeling a cortado is better without a lid.” That’s a refinement indeed, a thoughtful comment by an aficionado, not a take-the-cup-and-run remark. Some of us do hope for a return of indoor seating, especially when the weather turns colder, for more relaxing and this kind of attention-paying.
Nine Bar uses Gracenote coffee and turns out reliably excellent shots and cups. The lineup is just what we want, and instead of flavored lattes we are presented with basics: latte and only two “novelties” – chai latte and matcha.
What about that nitro cold brew on the menu? Why do people want foam on their coffee, well beyond the layer of milky stuff on a latte? And want it without the dairy? Perhaps the fans want a fancy drink that is not sweet from added sugar, but from the natural sweetness of the coffee beans. Or perhaps it is the resulting mustache, as in “Got Nitro”?
I read recently that George Howell, our Boston specialty coffee leader, sees cold brew as a marketing ploy, but it has its ardent makers and fans, such as those at Barismo in Cambridge and Arlington. I wanted its backstory. Nitro is cold brew, infused with its grounds for 12 to 20 hours, then siphoned with nitrogen gas to create a foamy head, thick like a Guinness stout. Nitro is where beer and coffee meet. It’s always cold and usually drunk where it is served. It’s what they call “niche” coffee, known to more than have actually sipped it (but not to many more).
A word here about misconceptions about caffeine. Forgive me if I repeat from earlier columns: What is key to the caffeine level is not the darkness of the roast. In fact, darker roasts have less caffeine than lighter ones. Espresso is lower in caffeine, ounce per ounce, than brewed or dripped coffee, because the coffee-flavored steam condensing into water and shooting through the grounds hasn’t had time to extract much caffeine; a filter coffee, meanwhile, can remain in its grounds for as long as the brewer wants before releasing it to fill a cup – at least it can if it uses a Clever filter holder that can retain the water and grounds until placed on a receiving vessel. So what counts is infusion time, and grams of grounds per cup, not the espresso method or the roast level.
But here is where we should ask what Nine Bar means – why is this little coffee stand named that? Nine bars is the amount of pressure (nine times normal atmospheric pressure) that is the usual measure in the use of an espresso machine, the pressure that forces the hot water, the condensed steam coming through the grouphead or portafilter through the pressed coffee grounds. I hear from a local expert that newer machines and experimentation is “lowering the bar,” but nine is the “gold standard.” Not so esoteric, but deserving to be explained.
Teas are provided by Mem Tea, as in most good cafes and top of our local purveyors’ line (Mem’s headquarters is just down Elm Street in Davis).
The foods are good-classic and minimalist: a breakfast sandwich with cheese, eggs and protein add-ons; scones; bagels; a pain au chocolat. Just right for takeaway, though not necessarily what you crave.
What on a nice, celebratory and relaxing day I crave is a little cortado, lid off, at Nine Bar. And some people in interesting T-shirts nearby.
Nine Bar, 11 Holland St., Davis Square, Somerville (8 a.m. to 3 p.m. seven days)
