Good as Gold
With a highly refined aesthetic and an unparalleled selection of specialty coffee roasters, Barista Parlor has set the standard for boutique coffee shops for the past two years. The café is known to produce rather visceral reactions on the part of its customers, and despite attracting a small following of haters, a steady flow of Nashvillians flock there for their house-made biscuits, extensive chocolate menu, and, or course, coffee. With the constant demand, it was only a matter of time before Barista Parlor opened a second location. With Barista Parlor Golden Sound, that moment has arrived.
One Giant Leap into Roasting
Barista Parlor Golden Sound is located in The Gulch, a former industrial neighborhood sandwiched between Downtown and Vanderbilt University. As evidenced by the luxury condos a few blocks away, the area has received a lot of recent development, but remains industrial enough to justify housing Barista Parlor’s new Diedrich CR-25 roaster. Barista Parlor has perhaps the most elaborate multi-roaster coffee program in the country, consistently offering eight different roasters. But according to roastery director Lee Sill, roasting has been part of the plan all along. Right now the Golden Sound crew is focusing on running the café, but they will slowly start introducing their own coffees into the mix in the months to come. It’s a bold move to debut your own coffee alongside renown roasters such as Counter Culture, Sightglass, Four Barrel, and Verve, but Sill is up to the challenge.
Top Gear
Roasting isn’t the only expansion at Golden Sound. The café has all of the hardware we’ve come to expect from an Andy Mumma production: two customized Slayer espresso machines, a row of Baratza Forté grinders for pour-overs, a Mahlkönig EK-43 for cold brew and cupping. The matte black Slayers allow BP to do training sessions during business hours or double their output during peak business hours. The extra fire power will likely come in handy, as both of the long communal tables were filled when we visited.
The South’s Coffee Capitol?
Nashville is poised to be the South’s premiere coffee destination, and Barista Parlor plays no small part of that. Now with a third café in the works, Barista Parlor seems to be blasting into the stratosphere. For Mumma and company the sound of coffee – roasting, grinding, brewing – must be golden indeed.
I hope to visit both Barista Parlors in the near future.
My old boss from the little start up coffee shop (who has no pallate or substantial knowledge of coffee; he just wanted to try to do something new in a small town with equipment that he had no knowledge of managing) visited the original Barista Parlor and said that the single origin espressi that he tried was “as acrid as vinegar.”
I truly doubt his assessment and trust his coffee knowledge as far as I can throw an elephant, but he is certainly a hater of sorts.
I hope to visit both BPs and Crema, learning more and more of specialty coffee as I have been out of employment in the craft for too long.
I’ve always had excellent espresso at Barista Parlor, but even the best shops serve bad shots sometimes. Sorry to hear your old boss had a bad experience though.
Barista Parlor also offers some of the best breakfast foods in Nashville….
Thanks, compelling information and I think it worth visiting. I will try to visit this weekend to taste great coffee of “Barista Parlor’s Stunning New Café”!