Owner Adam Marcello promises to bring “the best coffee on the planet” to Tryon

TRYON – When the renovations to the Missildine building are complete in October, Tryon will become home to another coffee shop thanks to Adam Marcello.

Marcello, a native of Gloucester, Mass., is working on opening a shop called Black Coffee at the location across from the Morris the horse statue and promises “the best coffee on the planet.”

“The one thing that we’re always striving for is to be the absolute best,” Marcello said. “So, when I say that we’re opening a world-class coffee shop, our intention is to make the best coffee shop in the entire world right here in downtown Tryon.”

He added that a lot of people think that having the best coffee shop in downtown Tryon sounds unbelievable, but this stance is based on a mix of important ingredients, equipment and brew training.

“That sounds ridiculous to a lot of people, I think, because they think, ‘well, how can you be the best coffee shop in the world?’ My point is that it doesn’t really matter where the location is, what really matters is a few key ingredients,” Marcello added.

“We use Counter Culture coffee, and that’s out of Durham, N.C. It’s the best coffee company in the world. So, we have access to the best coffee in the world. We have access to the best equipment, paying top notch for equipment made in Florence, Italy and we’re making coffee in the best possible way so that each coffee is unique and different,” explained Marcello.

Using several different varieties of coffees from all over the world in the Tryon shop is something Marcello said will be a staple of Black Coffee when it opens next month.

“We have a sundried Ethiopian coffee that tastes like blueberries, but you can only get that flavor if you do a couple of things,” Marcello explained. “You basically have to ground the coffee coarser than normal and have to make it in a different coffee maker and it gives the coffee this beautiful clarity and takes out a lot of the thickness of the coffee and gives you the clarity of the blueberry sweetness.”

Marcello said his baristas have to go through special training through Counter Culture in Asheville to be able to make each cup of coffee individually for each customer.

“When someone comes in and says they want a dark or strong cup of coffee, that means virtually nothing to me,” Marcello explained. “We will be dialing every individual coffee. We are constantly changing the water temperature, the extraction time, so it can be as perfect as it can possibly be on any given day. We’re training all of our folks. They’ve got to go through training in Asheville before they start so they know exactly how to measure the water, the coffee, the extraction time. We time everything on the basis of experimentation to make that perfect cup of coffee for each individual.”

This process, which Marcello said he believes could not be achieved in big city cafes or coffee shops, allows the customer to be able to know everything about each cup of coffee brewed at Black Coffee.

“A lot of big city coffee shops or cafes might not have the luxury of making their customers wait for four minutes for their coffee,” Marcello added. “That’s what we want to do, to make you wait, so you can see the variance in the coffee and see how it progresses from beginning to end. We can tell you what kind of coffee it is, who the farmer is, what their names are, what kinds of coffees they grow, how many children they have and even their dog’s name. We’ll tell you everything you want to know about your coffee before you drink it.”

Black Coffee will also offer customers smoothies, including the “Nina Simone” smoothie, teas and a full-size food menu that Marcello describes simply as “hand foods and stick foods” like tacos, burritos, spring rolls and shish kebobs. Because Marcello hails from Massachusetts, he is also looking into bringing seafood and sushi to the café in the future.

Doors will open on October 1 with a soft opening. A coffee tasting will be held exactly one week later on October 8 at 9 a.m.