Movie Nights are back!

It's been a while, guys.
Let's be honest but we promise it'll be well worth the wait.
M O V I E   M O N D A Y S are back!

Starting next Monday with "Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory"
Fitting right? Magical intrigue, golden tickets, people becoming blueberries, amazing sweets and a surprising helicopter ride... get ready!
June 7, 2010
Starting time: 7pm

Time to be a kid, again OR bring your kid...
Speaking of which, this year, we will start to show kid-friendly movies earlier in the day for folks with young'ins. Stay tuned to the blog to find out more info.

In fact, did you know that Capoyunk is open every day at 9a.m. (except Sundays, at 10a.m.) ready to go with H & H bagels, various coffee drinks, and flaky, buttery, delicious pastries?

We love you, South Philly and we're here for you.
(We even set up a mix tape swap!)

Lately, we've been getting greener and greener.
Our to-go cold cups are earth-friendly and bio-degradable, made of corn.
And our new pints are, also, bio-degradable and earth-friendly, made of sugar cane.
In similar spirit, we here at Capoyunk thought it would be swell to share our coffee grounds with local gardens for composting.

In the very near future, get ready to sit back and relax with your gelato and your favorite records.
We've got a record-listening party we're excited to set up; we're just working out the details.

Capoyunk, coming back with a bang!

The short list.

My Newest Obsession...

Rhubarb Gelato Con Brioche!!

Tart, sweet, and refreshing Rhubarb gelato held in the loving embrace of a buttery, rich Brioche, sprinkled with a little sugar: THAT'S how you start a busy work week... Scratch that, that's how you should start EVERY week.

Not into rhubarb? Don't fret, we've got plenty of other tasty springtime fruits for you to indulge your palate with. Why don't you stop by and check it out!!

See you soon.

The citric embodiment of summer.

A wide variety of flavors and smells evoke summer memories for me. Bell's Oberon pale wheat ale recalls several summers spent perched with friends at a street side cafe in Madison, wiling away the evenings under a dusty sunlight. Canteloupe's musky pungency will always be linked to the summer my brother worked as a fruit monger for the local co-op and we shared in a summer-long fruit feast that I doubt will ever be matched in my life. Grilling chicken covered in sweet barbecue sauce brings back my early years in Burlington, WI, watching intently as my dad masterfully manned the Weber at one of our family gatherings.

All of these tastes and smells are subtle yet simple, just as my favorite summer flavor: lime. Nothing says hot weather and cooling drinks like lime does. Gin and sodas (try one with Philly's own delicious Bluecoat gin) with a healthy dose of lime juice make our searing summer days easy to cope with. A splash of fresh lime pairs perfectly with pico de gallo salsa and grilled fish atop fresh corn tortillas, a favorite summer repast. Lime's distinct and unique flavor and punchy tanginess make for one of the most elegant sorbetti Capogiro offers, as well as one of the most refreshing.

While today's rain might not be the most predicitve of what lays ahead for our summer, those humid and harsh days will be here soon enough. When they do, you can be assured that one citrus fruit will make your days much more enjoyable. It turns out that Kermit was wrong: it's pretty dang easy being green!


These guys are good buddies.

Go Ape for Aperol!

Aperol--popular in Italy for years but unavailable in the States until fairly recently--is like a toned-down, more orangey version of Campari. It is commonly featured in that favored aperitivo the Spritz, which is Aperol (or Campari, or Cynar), some prosecco and a splash of soda. Perfect Summer refreshment!

It's sweet and refreshing, with enough of a bite to let you know it's for grown ups.

Come on down to CapoPenn and claim yourself a slice of Italian happy hour. If you sit with your back to Walnut Street, you can pretend you're in Venice or Milan...

How About a Little Sweet Action?

One of my favorite neighborhoods in Brooklyn is Red Hook. It's beautiful in that Marlin Brando "On the Waterfront" kind of way, and evokes the Bywater of New Orleans in vibe and appearance (which is one reason why John Frizell decided to hunker down and open his lovely cafe Fort Defiance there). In spitting distance of a giant Ikea, the scrappy and far-sighted folks of Added Value have turned a dis-used parking lot into an urban farm, supplying local restaurants with tasty greens and teaching local kids that food doesn't originate in a foil package (they are also instrumental in building a small farm on Governor's Island).

Stumptown Coffee of Portland Oregon planted their East Coast roastery in Red Hook, and I'll be danged if there isn't a hum-dinger of a brewery there, too. Six Point Craft Ales is fast becoming one of my favorite American craft breweries, and we have got some of their delicious Sweet Action Ale on tap over here at CapoPenn.

Shane Welch of Six Point, in an interview with Beerbasics.com, describes Sweet Action thusly: "...a hard one to describe, simply because it doesn’t fit into any particular style. It’s made with Pilsner and Pale Malts, but is hopped with only noble hops. It’s fermented with a Belgian yeast that provides a dry spiciness. Look for a unique orange taste underneath it all.. 6.9% ABV, 33 IBU".

What's missing from the description: the layers of delicious, sweet, fresh maltiness and the supple body; how those noble hop aromas complement the fruity yeast characters, and the razor-sharp bittering hop backbone tidily zips up all these sensations into a complete package.

Ezra, Dave and Jason sat outside in the May sun today, drinking way too many of those. They just couldn't stop! Come on in here and get some yourself, before these greedy pigs guzzle it goodbye. But, really: I'll be stocking this beer for as long as I can. It's just too good to let go!

Whaddup No'Libs? We haven't met, yet. We're Capogiro and we're kind of a big deal. ;)

CAPOGIRO WORLD DOMINATION PHASE: Fishtown
Northern Liberties... (thanks Conrad) 

The City Paper's Meal Ticket blew the lid off our Northern Liberties collaboration with Nana Petrillo's. I love The City Paper. It leaves me giggling uncontrollably in public places on the reg... Biden IS a gaffe machine! Thanks for the blurb!

Anyhow, YES we're totally excited to be an addition to a long list of delicious offerings at Joe Cleary's new dessert and coffee bar. (Awesome logo, guys!) They're shooting to open in early June and keep an Italian theme. Onward with summer, onward with delicious Italian sweets and three scoops cheers for the oncoming Capogiro revolution!

GUESS WHAT?!

So here I am, sitting in Passyunk and I'm not going to lie, it's the prettiest day I've ever seen. Oh, and it's ten in the morning. IT'S TEN IN THE MORNING AND PASSYUNK IS OPEN! Guys, this is epic. They've got the good bagels! And the pastries! And are smiling like crazy, waiting to see your beautiful faces. Come say hi, South Philly. Get some coffee and chat with us.

Rhubarb: A Love Story

I was always both confused and intrigued by rhubarb. When I was a kid, my parents would ship me off to Minnesota to stay with my grandparents, so that they could take an 'adult vacation' of their own (don't ask). So I would spend my time there having wholesome Midwestern fun, jumping off of sun-bleached wooden docks into one of the 10,000 murky lakes, barreling down their block on a rusty old cruiser, and trying to save myself from being sucked dry by the Volkswagen-sized native mosquitoes.

It was a simpler time. It was one of those summers that I first fell in love... with rhubarb.

My grandmother would harvest this strange plant from her garden in the summertime, an alien looking stalk that she told me was poisonous if not prepared correctly. She would cook it down with loads of sugar, then can, can, can for hours. When she first made me try a taste from the bubbling pot of pink, I tried to run. At last she succeeded in her efforts and I tasted one of the most unique things in my life. Tart and sweet at the same time, rhubarb demands the exact proportion of sugar to stalk to bring out it's majesty.

I remember at the end of my visit heading to the Minneapolis airport with a empty milk gallon full of sweet rhubarb (security was much more lax then). Ever since, I've taken every chance I can to have rhubarb, whether baked into a pie with it's amigo strawberry, or simply on it's own.

My love affair with rhubarb reached a new peak today when I came into Capo and my eyes fell on Rabarbaro gelato. After one taste, I was back at the lake in the summertime, my lips sticky and sweet, the summer sun setting over the trees, the mosquitoes waiting to strike.

So What Are The New Pints All About?

A question I got three times over the weekend, for which I am here now to inform you.

Our new pints are green. Scratch that, does that even mean anything anymore? Our new pints are earth-friendly and sustainable, like Oprah. If Oprah were a packaging supply. Let me explain...

Our new pints are made out of harvested sugar cane which is pressure formed into the lovely shape you take home. Simple, really, it's that simple. No plastics. No crying mother earth. Even the whole production facility uses up to 70% less fossil fuel than a typical plastics manufacturer.

So no more need to feel badly about takin' home a few pints. Not that you ever felt badly about it. Wait, does this mean you can take more home now? Like when you buy those 100 calorie bags of cookies, but ALWAYS eat two at a time. (I eat three at a time... Sshhh!)