Seattle and coffee

Call it a habit, call it an addiction, the one thing I got hooked onto, after moving to Seattle, is coffee. It all started with a colleague of mine, who happens to be a connoisseur of coffee. I would just walk down to the starbucks right next to our office to give him company and have an occasional coffee. At first, I had coffee to get over the cold weather in Seattle and it was the only hot drink I could get, but  I started liking it eventually and within a month or so, I was having atleast 2 drinks per day.

I first started with a cappuccino, because that’s the only item on the menu that seemed a bit familiar and the one which I could order with the least number of questions asked by the person behind the counter. One thing about US, I found a bit different is that everything on the menu in any coffee shop or restaurant can be customized  to death. Once when I heard a guy before me in the line order something like “Double Tall, no whip, soy cinnamon dolce frappuccino”, I was dumbfounded. Also, to add to my woes, the first time I tried to order a coffee, I asked for a ‘small’ size and the lady on the other side, with a rather weird look on her face, asked me if I wanted ‘tall’. Now, how on earth would I have guessed that the shortest size in a starbucks is called ‘tall’. So, I insisted ‘small’. She again repeated ‘tall’ and this time she seemed irritated, at that point, like any confused desi would do, I just nodded my head. And I got a huge glass of coffee, of which I managed to barely finish a fourth.

That day, I decided to know more about what I’m drinking. So, I asked the same colleague of mine, to tell me about coffee. And he gave me all the gyan about coffee. He explained the difference between coffee and espresso, the different variants of espresso drinks like cappuccino, latte, mocha, americano,macchiato and so on. Now, when I go to a coffee shop, I really know what I’m getting . And of course, I try to show it off to my friends by ordering something like ‘double short extra hot latte’. (And yes, ‘tall’ is not the shortest size in starbucks, there is ‘short’ but its not advertised).

At this point, came the realization that starbucks actually doesn’t have the best coffee in town. Its actually no where close to good.  Some of the places where I had good coffee are actually local stores : Zeitgeist cafe, Top pot, Zoka, umbria etc.

After all this, when I look back, my relationship with coffee was destined to happen anyway, as Seattle as a place has coffee all over it.

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