Would you travel all the way to Japan for matcha? Our head barista Ondřej Štökl says yes
You joined Ambiente in 2015. What has changed in eleven years in terms of our offer and coffee knowledge?
The quality of our coffee has evolved hand in hand with the shift in coffee culture across the country. I can say that we have state-of-the-art machines, and we have a significant advantage over our competitors in that respect. Modern technology helps baristas to be more precise and to serve faster.
Can you give an example?
I'm thinking of the La Marzocco Kave 90 coffee machine, automatic milk frothers from Übermilk, or the Swedish brand 3temp, from whom the baristas at Eska, Café Savoy, Myšák and U Kalendů have machines for preparing filter coffee.
To go back one step further, I am glad that at Ambiente, and in Prague as a whole, speciality coffee has become the standard. Our partners Nordbeans, who supply coffee to the whole of Ambiente, help us a lot and we can rely on the quality of the coffee, even with large quantities.
And where have you moved in that time?
I started as a head barista at Eska in Karlin and after a few years I moved up to head barista at Ambiente. I am glad that I managed to gain the trust of the general managers of our restaurants, so that today they see coffee as an integral part of the menu. They want to have speciality coffee in their establishments, and they want it in excellent condition.
I definitely want to continue to expand my knowledge of the industry. There's always something that gets me, and I have to look for the answer. And then there's the people. There's a new generation coming into restaurants that I'm learning to work with and talk to. They're different from the newcomers of ten years ago. Where my communication skills are not enough, my colleagues Jarda Novotný and Ondřej Schlägel complement me, helping me train new baristas and developing the coffee culture with me. I used to follow a more experimental path, but today we play it safe, because there is already a café with quality coffee on every corner in Prague. So the quality has to be consistent here too.
Is it still true that you go around to restaurants every day and tweak the coffee with the baristas?
That's true. During the morning, I manage about four places, and in the afternoon Jarda and Ondra come. We're on hand for the baristas in terms of setting up the machines, tweaking the espresso recipe and the filter and whatever else.
What other ways do you support the Ambiente baristas?
With new businesses comes new staff, and somewhere there are staff changes, so more and more often we organise excursions to the Nordbeans roastery in Liberec. Baristas there get to know the raw beans, the roasting process and the people in the team.
Here at UM, Ambiente's education and innovation centre, we organise introductory training for baristas. We'll discuss with new colleagues how the coffee culture and the coffee world in general is doing in a given year, and explain how coffee is approached here. Then we train together and fine-tune the espresso preparation, which is the most consumed in our businesses, before moving on to filter.
Last year, we launched the Barista Academy for the first time. It's a school-year program, so now the first year will be coming to an end. The goal is for a barista to become a person capable of being a head barista or partnering with an existing one in the business. Kind of like a sous-chef.
What does a head barista have over a barista?
They come up with seasonal drinks, know when to send equipment for service or repair, know how to adjust recipes, can handle the trickier service problems, and coordinate the other baristas.
The big project running at Ambiente right now is Guatemalan coffee. That's the coffee you picked in Guatemala, collected and then brought to our businesses. How do you evaluate the whole idea in hindsight, and how many beans did you actually bring in?
Exactly 4 tonnes and 205 kilos, but we didn't pick all of it, we just tried our hand at picking.
The trip brought us closer to the raw material, we got to know the farmers and how they work, how they grow, what each variety needs. We learned more than what we knew from the roastery. And it was also team building for the baristas from Ambiente and the people from Nordbeans who were sponsoring the trip. Next year we plan to visit another country.
A haul from Guatemala
The Ambiente and Nordbeans baristas brought home 35 kg Nitro Washed Geisha, 70 kg Natural Kombucha Pacamara, 400 kg Washed Yellow Pacamara, 700 kg Natural Anaerobico Bourbon and 3 tons Washed Caturra & Catuaí.
Why is it important for a barista to know the beans so closely?
There are a lot of small roasters in the country that go out to visit farmers, and then there are roasters that have their coffee imported through a third party. For me, the biggest success of a roaster, and by extension a business, is when they have direct contact with the farmer and go to taste the coffee on site. It's an exceptional experience and you get a completely different perspective on the raw material when you return. You appreciate it twice as much.
Another project you've embarked on is matcha. A few weeks ago, you came back from Japan - why matcha and why now?
Matcha is having a worldwide boom. There's a huge demand for it and we should respond to it, but in our own way. Knowing the raw material, finding the quality and bringing it to the guests. If we could grow it ourselves, of course we would prefer that, but it's not possible in our conditions.
This time we went to discover the tea ourselves. Our liaison in Japan was Rumi, whom we met when Ambiente's butchers were working in Japan with the wagyu farm Torikai Chikusan.
We planned our visit for about four months, and managed to visit tea farms, a tea market and several businesses. While we were there, we also tasted sencha (Japanese green tea) and realised that it is much more important to the Japanese than matcha. They see matcha as a global business and a lot of farmers have started to target it. But they see sencha as the best type of green tea.
Matcha is like filter coffee was 15 years ago. Nobody really knew anything about the drink, there were only a few experts who could go deep and offer quality. So again, we have a long way to go.
What new things have you learned about matcha?
Like coffee or wine, matcha tastes different depending on the region it comes from, the cultivar, the altitude and so on. Some matcha cultivars are good with milk, others are best with just water. This method of preparation is called usucha.
We have found that whether farmers pick the leaves by hand or with the help of a machine also has an effect on matcha. Most of the farms are in the lowlands, around 60 to 150 metres above sea level, but we also visited a farm at 600 metres above sea level. One matcha tasted fresh, another nutty, another grassy. The range of flavours is incredible.
For the first time in my life I also experienced cupping (ed. note: tasting) tea, it was an amazing experience. I was surprised how quick it is compared to cupping coffee. You take it, you pour it, you taste it and you're done in 70 seconds. With coffee, you wait at least 8 minutes, then you taste, and you taste in several rounds.
What are your future plans for matcha at Ambiente?
To choose ten samples out of thirty - this will be the task of a board made up of experts and matcha lovers. We will choose matcha for milk, matcha for usucha and also sencha, which is prepared classically, like other teas. Then on the agenda is training fellow baristas in the cafes who will offer quality matcha to guests.
Some might ask why we offer matcha if it's not a Czech ingredient?
Even our wine is not only Czech, our coffee can't even be from the Czech Republic, and as for matcha, as I said, we don't grow it ourselves. Tomáš Karpíšek once told me that even if the raw material is not local, it is important that we treat it as such and take the best care of it.
Do you consider Prague an exceptional city when it comes to coffee?
Absolutely. On average, for every 100 square metres you can find an outlet with a selection of coffee. At least one new coffee shop opens in Prague every month. We're right up there with Copenhagen and Berlin in the rankings. However, in these cities, the big roasters play the main role, and the small ones don't get into the cafés as much. While Copenhagen is dominated by Coffee Collective, La Cabra and April, and Berlin by Bonanza, Bahn and Five Elephant, in Prague you can taste an extremely rich variety of coffee from smaller and medium-sized roasters.
If you were to take your friends from abroad for a coffee in Prague, which five spots would you choose?
- I'd show them the roastery and the café at Mazelab. They have a modern, clean space and collect trends from all over the world.
- I would take them to Supernova in Karlín for a taste of world coffees and atmosphere.
- For filter coffee, specifically the Liberica variety, at the newly opened Pleiku.
- I would tell them a little about the history of the selection and how we popularised it in Prague over coffee in Karlin's Eska.
- And then we'd head over to our place at UM, where I'd give them a taste of experimental coffees they won't come across anywhere else. And I would also show them my coffee collection, the largest in the Czech Republic. (laughs)
