One of my favorite things in this life is coffee. You can call it a drug and tell me it is bad for me but I just don't care, I love it. I love the way it smells and the way it tastes and I love the little coffee high it gives you. I drink my coffee very strong and very black. My favorite drink is a double macchiato which is just two shots of espresso with a little bit of foam. It is perfection, and I always know a good coffee place by whether or not their espresso is good. You can make anything taste good by ladling tons of sugar over it, but good espresso is an art.
Beau and I live in the most fantastic area that is surrounded by good food and good coffee. It is terrible for two young people trying to save their money, but amazing for two young people who love good food. Of all of these places there was one place that continued to catch my attention but every time we passed by, at any time of the day, it was closed. And then maybe later that day at some random moment, it would be open! It is a coffee shop nestled between a flower shop and the Grand Lake Movie Theater called Day of the Dead Cafe. It looks dark and interesting and it is insanely cluttered with Day of the Dead artifacts all over the walls, in the windows, behind the counter and anywhere else it seems they were able to fit it. Even more intriguing to me than the decor was the fact that the owner, a smallish man with dreads and a very friendly face, seemed to just be open whenever he felt like it and always sat outside at one of his small tables. It is a very relaxed way of running a business, and I was dying of curiosity to see what sort of coffee a man like that sells.
We finally made it in one day when we were passing by late in the afternoon. The owner was casually talking to a man who must be a regular customer and Beau and I took the opportunity to look at the menu. It is a small and humble menu with the sweetest thing on there being a vanilla mocha. "Now this is real coffee," I thought. He also sells whole bean coffee by the pound, with names like "Marley Blend" and "Jimi Hendrix" how can you not already be falling in love? Since I cannot actually have the caffeine right now, I ordered an iced decaf coffee. It was strong and black and perfect! And while I sat with Beau and we talked politics and everything else under the sun, I also marveled to myself at the road coffee seems to have taken in America where coffee is less of a delicious excuse to see friends and enjoy life, and more of a giant sugar pill on the go with only trace amounts of actual coffee in it.
I have worked in two different coffee shops in my lifetime. I worked at Starbucks first, and then at a small drive through cafe owned by a man and his wife. I have always loved coffee; a love that seems to have started at home with my mom who would drink it every single morning. So when I got older, with Starbucks popping up all over the place, it seemed like the perfect place to work. I love coffee, so become a barista! But I was soon to learn that there is a huge difference between coffee and the crap they sell at Starbucks. Maybe they had the right idea a long time ago, but over-roasted beans and sugary drinks are not what coffee was intended to be. I was always shocked at the amount of people who would drink those blended sugar bombs and think they were drinking coffee. Did they not see us behind the counter making them? There is no coffee whatsoever in those drinks! It is a nasty syrup-y liquid blended with ice. You are basically drinking they nasty syrup with some sugar added in. Umm... eew. I stopped drinking anything from Starbucks as soon as I started working there, and haven't touched it since.
It was about a year after putting on my green apron that I moved on to bigger and better things. Actually, what I moved on to was better coffee in a much smaller space. It was here that I really learned to appreciate my favorite beverage and all that it has to offer. Cafe Agape, a small red box that you are likely to pass right on by, is a little drive thru "java shop" located in my small hometown of Beaumont. The owner, who I will not name becuase I don't actually have his permission to slap his name all over the internet, is a family man and a youth pastor. A little bit of an eccentric oddball, he was an absolute joy to work for. I don't know how much money his little coffee shop actually brought in, but I am happy he suffered through the hardships for the rest of us. His coffee beans were shipped to us in nameless silver bags and he carefully instructed me on the perfect way to blend the beans: one scoop of a certain bean to two scoops of another. We never did anything like that at Starbucks! It gave the espresso a depth and complex personality that is hard to find in any other cafe. He really cared about the flavor of his coffee! We used the best syrups to flavor our drinks and even though I never condone blended sugar, we even used delicious powders instead of nasty syrup in our fraps. If baristas got paid better I could have worked there for the rest of my life in complete happiness. His espresso was a smooth and dark delight with fruity notes right at the end, not a bitter pill that you need to add sugar to just to get it down. (In case you are wondering, you actually can have little espresso tastings the same as you do with wine! Try it with yourself: smell the coffee, sip it lightly and notice the different flavors. You might feel like a coffee weirdo, but after trying different kinds you will start to notice all the differences!)
I am not saying that Cafe Agape is the only good place to get coffee. I am, however saying that there are so much better experiences and coffees out there than the mega chain that has turned into more of a fast food joint than a coffee shop. So if you are a self-proclaimed coffee-aholic as a lot of us are, try going on a little coffee adventure and find a new place! I have been in coffee heaven since moving to the Bay Area. It is not just a stereotype that Berkeley people love their cafes, and living here has been completely worth it, if just for the coffee!
No comments:
Post a Comment