Of coffee and complications

A regular cup? Its not as easy as it sounds.

Ordering a cup of coffee in San Francisco is a weighty affair, a task to be approached with seriousness and sobriety. Well, seriousness, at any rate. First, one has to settle on a location, and that momentous decision in itself is enough to confound one unversed in the art of thinking without the calming hand of caffeine guiding his every thought. There is the radical hipster coffee shop, the upscale yuppie café, the bookstore espresso bar… the list goes on. I personally prefer the one that’s in a converted garage with bare concrete walls and exposed plumbing. It’s all very retro and hip, and the line of would be coffee drinkers always extends out into the street and down the block, as we wait like addicts for our fix.

Once you get to the coveted position at the front of the line, a dizzying array of choices confronts you. There is the Colombia Cauca Tierradentro, which apparently has “a terrific body, a softly layered mouthfeel, and a range of flavours that if one were to visually depict, might involve a statuette of Dorothy Hamill made of padron pepper infused caramel skating over a frozen lake of white pepper panna cotta”. In case you’re wondering, I did not make that up. There are times when you feel as a writer that you should just let a good thing stand. As for the coffee, I would have preferred a visual depiction of Paris Hilton wake-boarding on a lake of Bourbon, but one does not split hairs over such matters in polite company. If the Teirradentro does not meet your exacting needs, there are other choices — the Ethiopian Yirgacheffee, or the East Indian Sonagachee to name just a couple. Having an unpronounceable name is an essential attribute to any good coffee. Other desirable properties are being grown in inaccessible parts of the world where no white man has set foot before, being grown by indigenous family-owned cooperatives that practice rigorous inbreeding, and of course being sustainable, whatever that means. The observant reader would no doubt point to the inherent contradiction in shipping beans from faraway lands at great cost in money and resources, in the name of sustainability. To these killjoys, I say, fie on you. Drink another cup of the Ethiopian MeesaWannaKappee and stop your cribbing.

The preparation of these precious beans is an arcane science involving water types, pressure settings, temperature gradients, precision timing, and intense hyperbole. Most high-end espresso machines need to be operated with a firm hand and a detached supercilious expression, in which every aspiring barista is schooled. A yogic other worldly air of spirituality is helpful in brewing the right cup, and doing a few downward facing dogs before the process often helps. I once made the mistake of smiling at the pretty lady as she raised an inquiring eyebrow at me, and said, “I can’t pronounce the names of your coffees. Can you just make me a strong black cup of something? Just a regular cup of joe, like they used to do in those old diners. Can you do that?”

She just looked at me for a minute and replied, “You must be joking.”

(Papi Menon is a writer and technologist based in San Francisco)