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It’s true that\u00a02018 WBC<\/a> second runner-up Lex Wenneker and his business partner Dylan Sedgwick named their new cafe\u2014FUKU\u2014after the Japanese term for \u201cgood fortune.” If you speak with them, Wenneker, a three-time Dutch barista champion, will tell you how as a visitor to Japan he was impressed by all the small spaces where each day a single individual \u201cputs the same attention in every cup.\u201d In the same breath Sedgwick, a New Zealander with much international coffee experience, might cite Japanese craft precision as \u201cinspiration for our workflow.\u201d But if you’re like me,\u00a0you might have doubts. The explanation’s a touch too cute for these two.<\/p>\n These are, after all, the guys behind Friedhats Coffee Roasters<\/a>, a name they gleefully admit has led confused consumers to believe the company deals in French fries and attracted email spam targeted at milliners. What\u2019s more, Friedhats\u2019 aesthetic\u2014most obvious in its packaging but now also at FUKU\u2014might be summarized as ska-meets-psychedelica in a Roy Lichtenstein palette. Any way you cut it, their goofiness and subversion are colorful, contradicting any \u201cexpectations that we were gonna do something super chic and Berlin-style,\u201d as Sedgwick puts it.<\/p>\n So while the cafe FUKU is pronounced to rhyme with \u201ccuckoo,\u201d it seems its nomenclature arose from the same place it does when the four-letter word is carved into an elementary school bathroom stall: frustration.<\/p>\n \u201cThere was a point that I was pissed off at the whole [coffee] thing… I was gonna quit,\u201d Wenneker tells me. \u201cI just got back from the WBC in Dublin and everything was normal again, and I just couldn\u2019t hear one more complaint about the light-roasted coffee. People didn\u2019t get it. I just couldn\u2019t do it anymore, and that\u2019s when I wanted to stop.\u201d<\/p>\n He continues: \u201cThen we decided to look for a cafe again, as a solution\u2014to have something new to do. And as a joke, I wanted to call it \u2018the Friedhats\u2019 Fuck You Cafe.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n His defiance was likely sparked earlier, by the shuttering of Headfirst, a micro-roastery Wenneker co-ran and where he and Sedgwick started working together. Its closure came suddenly after Amsterdam authorities accused the venue of violating rules about what it could sell as a designated retail spot rather than a food and drink vendor. That was in late 2015, when Headfirst, at just two years old, was quite popular among locals and coffee tourists<\/a>.<\/p>\n In fact, the name Friedhats is no enigma\u2014it is an anagram. Scrambling the letters of \u201cheadfirst\u201d has provided at least a linguistically sentimental reincarnation of the old business. As for FUKU\u2019s present-day semantic scrambling\u2014the idea came from much closer than Japan.<\/p>\n \u201cHe was in Paris and he saw this place called \u2018Fuku,\u2019\u201d recalls Wenneker about Sedgwick. \u201cIt kinda says \u2018fuck you\u2019 but not really.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cA sushi place,\u201d his partner specifies.<\/p>\n Wenneker and Sedgwick built the bar themselves, leaving a large fa\u00e7ade for their illustrator (and part-time barista) Ivo Janss<\/a>. The most prominent equipment is a rare Kees van der Westen<\/a> three-group Mistral. There are three grinders: a\u00a0Mahlk\u00f6nig EK43<\/a>, an Anfim Super Caimano Barista<\/a>, and an ever-so R2D2-esque Lyn Weber EG1<\/a>. Around the bend is a moss green Slayer Single Group<\/a>, which patrons can get a courtside view of when seated in the front window.<\/p>\n Asked if his past titles up the pressure to perform in everyday work, Wenneker is candid, mentioning some particularly painful early feedback.<\/p>\n \u201cThere was this guy who came in. He was like, \u2018Ah, I expected a bit more because he\u2019s the almost-World Barista Champion, and it was just like a nice coffee that I got.\u2019 It hit me quite hard,\u201d he admits, with a good-natured laugh.<\/p>\n \u201cDon\u2019t come with too-high expectations,\u201d Sedgwick half-jokes.<\/p>\n \u201cNah, that\u2019s not true,\u201d says Wenneker. \u201cWe\u2019re doing something new now, I think, in the cafe with the long list of coffees that are available for espresso and filter. I don\u2019t think any cafe in Amsterdam has that.\u201d<\/p>\n Most remarkable is the menu\u2019s \u201cSuper Specials\u201d subsection, described by Wenneker as \u201ccoffees you just don\u2019t find anywhere because they\u2019re very expensive\u201d and \u201cusually rare or hard to obtain.\u201d Often competition coffees, they are standardly prepared by V60<\/a> and cost 7.50 euros. On a recent visit, that list included Brazil Daterra Laurina, Colombia Gesha X.O., Colombia Sudan Rume, and Ethiopia Gesha Village.<\/p>\n Because they have all the necessary licenses, FUKU can serve alcohol\u2014the wines lean towards natural and French\u2014and food; the venue has begun with short hours and easy-to-eat carbohydrates, but eventually plans to stay open well past sunset. The back patio, with an overhang, is ready for warm even if wet days.<\/p>\n Wenneker and Sedgwick have two part-time staff, and Wenneker\u2019s brother is their accounts manager. Still, the pair works six days a week, splitting their time between cafe and roastery. The latter, which they moved into in September, occupies a section of shared space in a hangar-like unit. Compared to the former roastery, it is the boondocks, though has no shortage of storage or parking for the new company car, a secondhand Volvo wagon used for local coffee deliveries. Most international orders are sent within Europe, though the US and Canada are catching on, they report.<\/p>\n Meanwhile, Wenneker maintains he is done competing. Earned in June 2018 at the WBC held only six kilometers south of FUKU, his latest, second place, ranking satisfies in far more ways than I expected to hear.<\/p>\n Lex Wenneker<\/p>\n<\/div>\n He explains: \u201cIf you get first place, you have all these obligations, you have to go everywhere, people expect you to show up for stuff. We were already talking about the cafe, so we knew we couldn\u2019t really do that. So before the whole competition started I was like, \u2018Yeah, second. I\u2019ll go for second.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI was really happy,\u201d says Wenneker of the outcome. \u201cSecond place is kind of what I really aimed for.\u201d<\/p>\n The response is quintessentially Dutch: modest, pragmatic, evenhanded. It is also an elegant way of celebrating one\u2019s good fortune while still issuing, to the powers that be, a big FU.<\/p>\n Karina Hof is a Sprudge staff writer based in Amsterdam. Read more\u00a0Karina Hof on Sprudge<\/a>.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n The post In Amsterdam, The Latest From Friedhats Coffee Is A Big FUKU<\/a> appeared first on Sprudge<\/a>.<\/p>\n Source: Coffee News<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" It’s true that\u00a02018 WBC second runner-up Lex Wenneker and his business partner Dylan Sedgwick named their new cafe\u2014FUKU\u2014after the Japanese term for \u201cgood fortune.” If you speak with them, Wenneker,…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[26],"tags":[63,27,65,33,61,32,59,31,30],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thecurbkaimuki.com\/rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1977"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thecurbkaimuki.com\/rest\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thecurbkaimuki.com\/rest\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thecurbkaimuki.com\/rest\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thecurbkaimuki.com\/rest\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1977"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/thecurbkaimuki.com\/rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1977\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thecurbkaimuki.com\/rest\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1977"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thecurbkaimuki.com\/rest\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1977"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thecurbkaimuki.com\/rest\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1977"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"fuku](\"https:\/\/sprudge.com\/file\/2019\/03\/FUKU_windowKarinaHof-1170x780.jpg\")
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\nAll that said, guests at FUKU, which opened in September, get no sense of being rebuffed or shooed. Before even going inside the cafe, a sight of delight appears on an entranceway door: a vintage column of feeder trays from legendary Dutch automat chain FEBO<\/a>. Today, instead of hamburgers or krokets<\/a>, they dispense coffee beans in Friedhats\u2019 signature plastic jar packaging (nominated for a 2018 Sprudgie Award<\/a>).<\/p>\n![\"fuku](\"https:\/\/sprudge.com\/file\/2019\/03\/FUKU_breakfast_KarinaHof-1170x780.jpg\")
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<\/p>\nFUKU is located at Bos en Lommerweg 136 HS, Amsterdam<\/a>. Visit Friedhats’\u00a0official website<\/a> and follow them on Facebook<\/a> and Instagram<\/a>.<\/div>\n