After our routine visit to the Public Market last Saturday morning, we changed things up and headed off to the new coffee roaster on the block instead of our normal Joe Bean hangout. I had heard about Fuego Coffee from owner Tony Colon’s victory in the most recent Latte Art Throwdown hosted by Joe Bean at the Smoke Stack Cowork. Unfortunately I couldn’t attend that event, but his win piqued my interest. Once I saw they were open in the City paper last week, I had to stop by and see how they were doing.
The outside of the building is easily identifiable with a bright orange and green coffee themed paint job that encompassses their entire storefront and made us like their style right off the bat. The interior is sparse and warehouse like and surprisingly cozy due to the relatively small size of the bar area. We were the first patrons of the day and ordered up an Aeropress for me and a cappuccino for my fiancée. They had four coffees available that day and I decided on the Kenyan Peaberry after an appealing description from Tony and that it was just aged enough to serve.
My cup was acidic forward (the grapefruit notes they described), very clean and pleasant through the Aeropress. I’m a big fan of the device and use it at home for my coffee since it can turn out solid coffee fairly easily. For now they are doing their manual serving with that method and will be getting their advanced Alpha Dominche Steampunk coffee machine relatively soon. According to the crew it will be able to perform a number of different brew styles in under 60 seconds per cup with completely programmable variables to allow for full control. This is a relatively new machine and the first one in Rochester so I’m very eager to see what they can do with this awesome technology.
My fiancee described her cappuccino as smooth, strong, very pretty and she enjoyed it a great deal. It was also really nice to get some face time with Tony and his wife (don’t recall her name) and we has some good conversation about coffee and the Rochester food scene as well. We enjoyed our time at Fuego and will definitely be back soon!
