Coffee

Strangest regional variation I ever encountered was in Moscow, went in to some random shop and they put hundreds & thousands (sprinkles/jimmies) on top of it. Let’s just say there’s a reason that never took off.

This sounds disgusting tbh, I can see why Viennese coffee isn’t for you.

It sounded disgusting to me, too! But I am a convert. I have not had delicious coffee in Vienna, ever. It goes without saying that Italy is coffee paradise

It was a decade ago that I was in Norway, but the new “wave” of coffee at the time was under-roasted beans, the resultant drink was grassier and much more caffeinated. Idk if it is still the case up there. My friends in Oslo were at the time very excited about how well local baristae were performing in international competitions

yeah I was in Norway in 2015 and it was all about very light roasts.

but maybe less so now?
https://mtpak.coffee/2022/04/light-roasted-coffee-are-norwegians-stepping-away/

Interesting, thanks for the link. I’ve never flown higher than in Oslo, three cups in. I remember saying “uh oh I think I have made a mistake”. The caffeine was nuts

Now you know what Balzac was on about

I think with that kind of consumption under one’s belt, pretty much anyone can be a writer (or a typist as Capote would put it)

I've always wondered how the coffee is in places where they actually grow the beans.

Fuck Starbucks

This story is 15 years old so things may be changing, but Colombia at least has legendarily bad coffee: https://theworld.org/stories/2009-12-22/colombia-land-horrible-coffee

yeah most of the "good" stuff gets exported, at least that is what I saw in Peru

Even domestically, though. Hawaii grows coffee, but is Hawaii known for its brewed coffee? Don't think so. I think Ethiopia brews good coffee, right? Or at least distinctive.

ive no idea what european coffee is

in a bad coffee place or like a supermarket or filling station youll get bad coffee in europe, my experience has been the same in the states

in a decent restaurant or bar or coffee place you'll get good coffee

this is essentially how anything works anywhere

tho tbh my personal taste- and im not clued in on the vernacular, apologies- is for a darker/burnt flavour and not the reddish/fruity stuff that the swankier coffee places in the british isles extol

go to any French cafe with picturesque cane chairs outside and a plat du jour etc and you will get terrible coffee. I have also not had good coffee in Vienna, even at a very nice place with marble tabletops and cut glass decanters everywhere but i know they are famous for basically inventing “cafe culture” in the late 17th century so i dunno maybe i was just in the wrong place

best coffee i ever had was in a shop in berlin selling coffee machines which fair dos is good salesmanship

Verdict on iced oat mocha is creamy , not too sweet, pretty good

Unfortunately my favorite coffee ever is a basic as anything choice: granita from Sant’ Eustachio in Rome

every so often i taste a plant-based substitute that is so fuckin good that i’m like, if we had to just cancel the substituted product forever.. i’d be okay with that. imo oat milk and pea milk have cracked the code

“Basic” because it’s notoriously good, “my favorite sculpture is Michelangelo’s David” i.e.

imo oat milk and pea milk have cracked the code

― Humanitarian Pause (Tracer Hand), Sunday, January 21, 2024 1:14 PM (fifty-six seconds ago) bookmarkflaglink

bro get a hold of yourself

also it’s fun to say “pea milk”

pee milk more like

"whats the pee stand for?"

"im selling it to americans to put in their coffee"

couple thoughts on the vienna convo

1 most pizza in new york city isnt that great but almost none of it is bad, most places that are famous for a thing are like that you still have to know where to get the good stuff but the baseline is high

2 if a place has a big culture around something its usually pretty stuck in its ways so it doesnt keep up with the latest stuff, a cup of diner coffee in america is often still pretty bad but if you go to a new fancy coffee shop you might get amazing coffee, the people running that coffee shop felt no allegiance to the culture of bad diner coffee so it wasnt a big deal to try something new

btw re that 1st point its awesome when a place is really into a thing everyones got an opinion a favorite place theres tons of choice variety etc

Had interesting coffee experiences on a Balkan trip a while back. In Sarajevo, the Bosnian coffee is a particular thing, mostly like Turkish coffee (i.e. pan heated, very strong) but with its own variation: https://www.bbc.com/travel/article/20140707-the-complicated-culture-of-bosnian-coffee. But then right next door in Croatia, which of course was part of the Republic of Venice, the Italian coffee culture is dominant and it's all espresso-based drinks.

Yep that’s otm ime (re Bosnian, I don’t recall having coffee in Croatia when I was there). It was special.

Re: milk substitutes, almond milk would be my choice but I avoid that due to the amount of water needed to produce it. (I imagine a lot of the water is still reclaimed for use, but it's still an enormous amount for a relatively modest amount of physical product.) Oat milk I don't mind because I like oatmeal, but in terms of taste I'd recommend Silk's unsweetened soy milk - whatever they do to it, it lives up to its name with the silky and smooth cream-like texture. (I've been a big soy milk drinker simply because it's a perfect alternative to dairy if you have problems drinking milk and it's long been a staple in Asian supermarkets where you can get gallon jugs that are pretty cheap, but it typically leaves in enough texture to let you know it's made from ground up soybeans.)

oat milk is carb-city for me (type 2)
i tend to go with unsweetened almond milk, most places do a pretty decent job with it
- if i do it at home i add a dash of half & half, the fat helps w microfoam & it turns out quite nice & silky

I have also not had good coffee in Vienna, even at a very nice place with marble tabletops and cut glass decanters everywhere but i know they are famous for basically inventing “cafe culture” in the late 17th century so i dunno maybe i was just in the wrong place

A close friend loves Julius Meinl and I was surprised to see what was its first U.S. location in Chicago, which apparently had been there for 20 years. (I found out recently it closed in 2022. There were several other locations in Chicago as well, but they also closed.) I honestly can't remember much about the coffee, I only had it a few times (albeit in Chicago, not Vienna), so I imagine it was good and reliable but not mind-blowing.

The greatest cup of coffee I ever had was in Barcelona. Café con leche, right when they opened in the morning. I just got off the Eurotrain from Paris, and I felt like complete shit because I was rudely awakened in the middle night (not coffee related, so I'll explain later.) So I really, REALLY needed a good cup of coffee and man did that cup deliver in every possible way. I even took a photo to commemorate it - it was that good, like "this is THE best coffee moment I've ever had and ever will have." I wish I remember the place, but I did research it and it was highly recommended and within walking distance of the train station.

Anyway, re: the train, when I first got on, some weird, angry looking guy was sitting on my assigned bunk, so I thought, "well, it's just a bed, they're all the same" so I took what was presumably his. Then in the middle of the night, I was shaken awake and had a light shined in my face by these guys that looked like rail company employees. They all spoke in French or Spanish, I forgot which, and I just said "what's going on?" They clearly were looking for someone else, and it took them a second to realize it was the guy in my assigned bed. They woke him up, spoke to him, and he drowsily got on his shoes and gathered his stuff and walked out with them. I went back to sleep, but in the morning I thought I should complain and be boorish. So I half-yelled at the guy who goes around waking passengers, saying "this is totally not cool, I paid for a sleeping car to get a good night's sleep!" and asked why they did all that shit, and it turns out the police was looking for that guy and they arrested him and took him off the train. Due to a language barrier, I couldn't quite understand what the guy did, but it kind of scared the shit out of me.

that's a good night train story

inter railing with the then ms mac in 200X (i must protect the lady's modesty) we took the night train from vienna to prague and it wended its way along what was then the eu border and each time the same guards came in and woke us and asked for our passports and on the thirs such event she threw a slipper at them and there was An Incident

i dont remember the first coffee thereafter but the one wa
we had in vienna just before embarking was good

/each time we crossed it/

moral of the story night trains in europe are good its like dickens/christie/hitchcock would have you believe basically

lagoon otm above obv

Disagree, we got an overnight train from Ukraine to Poland once, train stopped near the border around 2am in freezing weather, everyone got put off the train, we had to change to a different one, border guards came on the new train before we could progress. Not the best experience.

iirc this a coffee thread not a euro travel humblebrag thread

jk jk

Sant’ Eustachio in Rome

One of my favorite places. Went back in 2022 after not being there for 12 years and it was still great.

lol, xp

Best coffee I’ve ever had maybe summer of 95, a huge self made French inspired cafe au lait in a fuckin’ bowl

Disagree, we got an overnight train from Ukraine to Poland once

not europe, away with u

One of my favorite places. Went back in 2022 after not being there for 12 years and it was still great

They sell their beans online. Incredibly good coffee even at home

The awesome thing about Italy is you can get pretty decent espresso just about anywhere for 1 euro, maybe 2 if you want to sit down, and that includes tax.

Good info

I mean maybe Blue Bottle is slightly more complex or smooth or something, but you're looking at almost $6 after the obligatory tip.

Disagree, we got an overnight train from Ukraine to Poland once

not europe, away with u

The BB Nola is tasty on ice

I make coffee at home every morning and it’s fine

last time I went to buy beans at my local coffee roaster, they were out of the one I usually get, so I decided to try some new ones. One of the ones I got was the Viennese Blend. I opened it today and oof, the coffee tastes like drinking an ashtray.

Yeah, for drip coffee I kind of feel like the best coffee is the one I make at home, since at this point I can basically make it the way I like it. As long as I have some good quality, carefully roasted, fresh beans to work with, I can usually dial in the grind and method to get it pretty good by the second or third try, which is as good as I find at any outside coffee shop, for my taste at least.

I love Warren Zanes's coffee story about Tom Petty - he didn't include it in his book, but after Petty died, he published it in Rolling Stone as a tribute.

Basically, Petty has the best coffee he's ever had at this diner north of Malibu, so he asks about it, and it's just Maxwell House, so he asks “can I see how you make it?” The manager takes Petty into the kitchen, where he sees a Bunn Automatic coffeemaker ("The Bunn Automatic is a pretty standard fixture. For the places that do high-volume work, their units are professional-grade, tied into the plumbing rather than just sitting on the countertop.") So Petty installed two machines in his home, and later, following the example of a private chef who made an especially good cup of Maxwell House, he made sure that anyone making coffee use a knife to level off every cup of coffee grounds that was measured out, it had to be exact. Then Zanes elaborates:

Had I ever seen Tom Petty without a cup of coffee? I wasn’t sure I had. When he walked onto his bus after a show, the crowd still thinking they might get one more song, there was a cup of coffee waiting for him. On the plane? A cup of coffee. At the Heartbreaker clubhouse? Coffee...

Yes, he told me, he’d tried some espresso, made backstage by one of the Heartbreakers. I’m guessing Benmont Tench or Steve Ferrone, but Petty didn’t say. He just said he didn’t get it. Should a cup of coffee be over that quickly? Is what’s good for tequila good for coffee? He didn’t answer the question, just looked at me in a way that said, No, it isn’t, Warren. What he was after in a cup of coffee, he explained, was something he found in a Gainesville diner, where he could sit for hours, getting refills, wrapping his fingers around a cup that kept being replenished. This, I came to believe, is what this coffee story was all about. It wasn’t about coffee. Not exactly.

And I totally get Zanes point, because if I'm having coffee at home, that's what I like to do - just chill for a while and have a big, warm cup wrapped in my fingers and be able to nurse it for a while. I almost never have espresso or anything like that at home, only when I'm out at a restaurant or café with someone.

(I'm not really a Maxwell House drinker, but I don't think it's bad either - I would not turn down a cup if I was at a diner.)

I still remember, back in the 80s, the satisfaction of a cigarette and a cup of coffee after a cheeseburger. I wonder if Tom Petty enjoyed the same feeling with weed. Seems to be the most likely explanation for his love of Maxwell House.