Blue Bottle Cafe Bringing 17th Century Flavor to Palo Alto

A bustling Palo Alto street corner will soon mark the intersection of a small piece of the 17th Century and the world's unofficial tech capital.

An upscale cafe named after Europe's first known coffee house will soon open shop near the Caltrain station on 101 Lytton Avenue, the San Francisco Chronicle reports.

Blue Bottle Cafe's Palo Alto shop will be a 35-seater - one of the company's bigger ones according the Chronicle report - with a limited breakfast menu and a "genius bar" featuring home espresso machine demos.

The original "Blue Bottle Cafe" opened up shop in pre-WiFi Vienna in the late 1600s, according to the company's website. That was after an intrepid emissary (Franz George Kolshitsky) brought in some ungodly Turkish coffee after completing a dangerous mission (he had to cross Turkish lines to get a message to Polish troops).

Today's Blue Bottle Cafe aims to match the essence of what 17th Century Vienna abuzz - literally - company founder James Freeman says.

 “I will only sell coffee less than 48 hours out of the roaster to my customers, so they may enjoy coffee at its peak of flavor," Freeman says in the company's mission statement posted on its website.

"I will only use the finest organic, and pesticide-free, shade-grown beans.”