Hiroshi Sawada (Streamer Cofeee, Tokyo) is a world class latte artist and purveyor of all things style, design and caffeine. The man who famously donated his Millrock Latte Art novelty check to CoffeeKids is in California this week, pouring triple rosettas and raising money for CoffeeKids. He’s already poured at the Clif Bar factory and Four Barrel Coffee, and he’ll be wowing the Hayes Valley crowd today at the Ritual Container (or as the kids call it, R5) from 10AM to Noon. Hiroshi will be traveling south and showing up at Gjelina Takeaway on Monday the 19th from 1:30-3:30PM.
We caught up with Hiroshi at Four Barrel Coffee yesterday, where he was pouring latte art using Four Barrel’s single origin Colombia Andino espresso. Most customers we talked to were both a) baffled there was such a thing as a latte art competition and b) completely smitten with Hiroshi – it’s hard not to be. Sawada took over the brew bar of 4B for the day with a GS/3 – it was a great showcase of “barista as a craft” and also a terrific introduction to CoffeeKids for a lot of San Franciscans.
BTW, did you know Hiroshi has a blog? It’s in Japanese, but if you have Chrome it’ll translate it instantly! Though in our translation, his bio says he’s a “Latin Artist Representative.” You should also check out this Hiroshi shout-out in Oliver Strand’s recent Japanese coffee crawl guide.
