Why Espressos in America Are Not Good?

I'm not going to get into the details about the finer points of making espresso but the author has no idea what he is talking about or has not visited a decent cafe.

I have enjoyed espresso for many years from little Italian bakeries in Toronto and Montreal, to wonderful coffee shops in DFW, Austin and almost every place I have ever been in America and Canada does it right.

About the only thing I can agree with is that Starbucks is swill. It is like drinking poison once you have enjoyed a good espresso or for that matter coffee.

Starbucks along with all chains use essence to make their coffee taste the same everywhere. It is flavored and doesn't require a high grade of coffee bean.

My advice is to visit these small micro roasters that create some the best espresso in the world. Better than anything you can find in Italy.

My take on it is that Americans were introduced to the Espresso bar by Starbucks but since then the quality of other coffee places has improved dramatically and now Starbucks is the last place you want to get coffee unless you are stuck at a hotel that has percolator coffee which has insufficient caffeine to get a buzz.

Part of the issue is that Starbucks buys in such large quantities that it can't possibly get the best beans.

My impression also are than both New York and San Francisco have worse coffee than average than the U.S. I think part of it is that Starbucks has saturated those markets so that stock market analysts will say, "Starbucks is doing great, there are five of them on the same block as my apartment and four on the same block as my office."

Most of those people never go to the 49 flyover states (including 0.5 of NY and CA each) so they think the rest of the country has as many Starbucks and the stock stays high.

French here, can definitely second that, American coffee has improved a lot in the past years, but despite trying extremely hard, it just falls short. All cafés, brasseries and bistros in France use Cimbali, it's the best, made by the best.