Brazil Roosa Cafe / The Return of Pneumatic Tubes

CoffeeBeer >> Double Shot Buzz >> Brazil Roosa

For quite a few years, Sheffield City Centre has been a construction zone of new projects, many of them abandoned as soon as the Covid 19 Lockdown struck, which pretty much finished the job of making the whole area look like a ghost town. Since things opened up again, Orchard Square is fresh and thriving, Fargate remains an obstacle course for pedestrians amidst the maze of torn-up pavements, and Barkers Pool has gradually been finishing up some of its projects. The most extensive area of construction, however, was the whole area between West and Wellington Streets. But just in the past couple of years, not only has the Cambridge Collective and Leah’s Yard finally opened, offering plenty of new shops and eateries, but Pound’s Park, constructed on the site of the old fire station and leading right into the Cambridge Collective, also opened.

It was only last year, though, that I noticed an attractive-looking coffee truck, another renovated horse box, hiding on the western edge of the park. The sign on the street advertised Brazilian coffee and treats, so naturally I wanted to try it at some point. Sadly, when the weather was a bit better and I could have sat at a table out front, I never really had the chance.

But just this month, in the midst of Sheffield’s deep freeze, I decided to make an effort and stop before work at Brazil Roosa Cafe for a takeaway coffee. A very pleasant woman in the front window took my order and made my drink, and an equally pleasant man took my payment through another window on the side. My cortado was pretty milky, but that was my fault for not specifying that I wanted it dry. But I could tell the coffee was really nice, perhaps a bit on the mellow side for my taste, but that could have been all the milk. I did really enjoy it, and I will definitely stop back for perhaps an espresso.

The cafe-on-wheels offers all sorts of coffee drinks, mochas, hot chocolate, speciality teas, and sweet Brazilian treats including pastel de nata, and also a couple of savoury snacks. The teardrop-shaped coxinha that were displayed in the front window were made with chicken, covered in dough and battered and deep-fried, so they sound really yummy for chicken eaters. But for people like myself, on a future visit I’d definitely like to try the pao de queijo, which is basically a gluten-free baked cheese roll which sounds like a really nice savoury breakfast item.

Brazil Roosa started off in May 2024 as Grao Brazil, which was the business of Rosangela Rodriguez, a Brazilian who has lived in Sheffield for a while, so that was obviously her who made my cortado. I hadn’t realised, when I checked out a bit of the Ruskin Park Festival last summer, that it was her coffee truck set up there. (Needless to say it was late afternoon, and by that time my friend and I were a bit more interested in a pint at a nearby hostelry.)

I took my Cortado and wandered by a couple of the shops in Leah’s Yard and past the stairs leading up to the Cambridge Collective, and I got a good feeling about what’s very gradually happening to this part of Sheffield’s city centre, as opposed to the still-under-construction-and-commercially-deserted Fargate. But I suppose once they get Fargate finally finished and populated with new businesses, Sheffield overall should be looking pretty good. I mean, this might be another six or seven years, so I’m not going to hold my breath. But for now, things are finally looking promising.

Brazil Roosa Cafe is open from 10am to 4pm Wednesday to Sunday. And not only is it close to the Cambridge Collective, but it’s also just up the road from the Moor. I’ve always been attracted to these little coffee vans, so I do hope they get plenty of business.

Speaking of horse carts being reused as coffee cafes reminds me of an email conversation from a few months ago with my Bay Area friend about another business trend that should be resurrected:

My breakfast reading this morning was the latest issue of BBC Science Focus, in which they talk about the potential return of pneumatic tubes. The article was obviously written with young people in mind, stating that many readers wouldn’t have heard of the pneumatic tubes of the 20th Century. My god, we must be getting old...

The article talks about where pneumatic tubes are currently still in use. For instance, they’re very useful in hospitals, as they’re clean and sanitary, fast, secure, and currently highly automated. Thousands of samples, sensitive information, and even human organs can be zipped pneumatically around the hospital in seconds each day, all RFID-tagged for sorting and tracking their routes. For instance, at the Bristol Royal Infirmary, recently retrofitted with a new pneumatic system, patient specimens can be sent to up to 60 separate rooms at a time.

And on the two-mile-long Roosevelt Island in New York, ever since 1975 all of the apartments have had chutes connected to a pneumatic system where residents can zip away their trash and recycling direct to the facilities, eliminating the need for pet-scaring trash and recycling trucks. I’ve heard about a similar system in single high-rises, but imagine if entire cities could be hooked up this way, with disposables automatically sorted while being zipped down the tube system?

The article says that they came into disuse with the advent of electronic and wireless communication systems, so previous pneumatic systems like banks used to use can all be done digitally. I remember the Farmers & Merchants Bank near me in Long Beach that had a drive-through with a pneumatic-tube window where I could instantly deposit my paycheck, complete with that satisfying “SHHROOOP!", back in the days when paychecks were physical as well.

So various industries and town planners are once again considering pneumatic systems for postal deliveries, stocking shops, and hopefully delivering LetsEat and Uber-style meals. So once again, you and I appear to be the amazing innovators of these ideas, years before anybody else actually takes them seriously and who ultimately will get all the credit. That's great news! I was vaguely aware that there are still some applications for vacuum tube technology, but I never imagined that my last urine sample might have gone zipping through the walls of the Kaiser facility before I left the building. Or that residents of large housing complexes might be launching their trash and recycling (compostables too, I'd hope) in vacuum propelled canisters. Sending out your laundry is a possibility too, I'd suspect.

And I've been holding on to hope that something like the "Hyperloop" envisioned by Elon Musk, with its low-pressure tubes and passenger pods, might give us the ultimate quick ride between, maybe Fresno and Bakersfield, on a swifter timeline than the beleaguered bullet train.

And yes! I am eternally grateful that we experienced that period of time early in our careers -- now seemingly all too brief -- when we would receive a piece of paper on Friday, maneuver up to the drive-thru window at our local bank, insert a check and deposit slip into a canister and latch it tight, then let it fly through the tubes. Life's vital transactions are so much less tactile for young people of today.