The Riverside Café - Coffee Shop
Bike culture has long been known to cross over into coffee culture, as it seems the two go hand in hand. Since my first trip to Italy, I have wanted to bring the highest quality, freshly prepared espresso to Riverside Cycle. The idea behind The Riverside Café was to bring the best espresso to the best bike shop. We wanted to create a place where riders could hang out before or after a ride, have a shot or a cappuccino, or stop in mid-ride for a little motivation before continuing on to Gloucester, or Ipswich, or wherever your ride takes you. We always have incredible movies playing on the flat screen with surround sound at the espresso bar, whether it is mountain biking on the North Shore, skiing and snowboarding with TGR, classic Eddy Merckx and Anquetil storming through France, or some surf from Riding Giants and Mavericks. We simply wanted a place where the biking community could come together over a perfectly prepared espresso or cappuccino and talk about riding or whatever. Please stop by soon and hang out.
About The Espresso
Anyone can run drip coffee through a filter. Here every shot is ground fresh in our La Marzocco Italian espresso grinder. We adjust the grind to get the perfect extraction on every shot. The shots are pulled on our La Pavoni two group commercial machine that has been dialed in and set up by a professional espresso service company. The cups are kept warm on top to keep the espresso at the perfect temp at the cup so no flavor is lost from quick cooling. None of this matters unless you are using the freshest beans you can get. We talked to John Mahoney of the Atomic Cafe who has been roasting his own beans for years. With his knowledge of our type of machine and the art of roasting, he offered to make a small test batch roasted custom for our La Pavoni that would extract a perfect shot, with great crema, and we were hooked! He hit it right on the head. To maintain freshness, we order only in small batches so we get new beans all the time. It is only ground in our La Marzocco commercial grinder from Italy when you order it to ensure maximum freshness. The rest of it is simply the barista art of bringing together the perfect grind, temp, tamp pressure, and extraction time to deliver the perfect shot, and that's what we do, every time. We use Illy porcelain cups to maintain the perfect temp at the cup because if you use too thin a cup, the shot will cool down too quickly and lose flavor. So stop by The Riverside Café on your next ride and hang out for a bit.