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Why mess up perfect coffee
with any other ingredients?
By LEN KLEMPNAUER
of TheColumnists.com
Am I the only person in the U.S. who doesn’t know the difference between a mocha and a latte? I don’t even know what they are, except both involve coffee combined with other ingredients that appear to belong in some other concoction.
Sorry, Seattle, but most of the confections java junkies tote out of today’s coffee houses look as if they were whipped up by a soda jerk in a 1950s’ ice cream parlor.
Although not an ascetic, I still take my coffee the old-fashioned way, the same way we should toss back our Jack Daniels: Neat. Neat in coffee terms means black. Neither cream nor a diluted surrogate nor some chemical taste-alike should desecrate the flavor. Nor should it be tainted with even a hint of anything sweet.
That’s contrary to how I was raised. My parents, both heavy coffee drinkers, polluted theirs. My dad flooded his with cream (but never a sweetener) while my mom shoveled sugar into hers (but no milk product). Every morning before they left for work at their small restaurant--the Cross Roads Drive-in in Santa Cruz, Calif.--they would sit at our kitchen table chain-smoking cigarettes and finishing off a pot of coffee. They never breakfasted until that pot was drained to the very last drop.
At their mom-and-pop diner and other cafes and coffee shops in the 1940s and ‘50s, a pot of hot, percolated coffee was always ready for customers, whatever the hour. And that pot might have been sitting there more than an hour or two. In the (G)olden Days, brewing occurred in places where beer was beget while roasting was something you did over a campfire with hot dogs and marshmallows.
In high school in the early to mid-1950s, I never drank coffee, and I wince every time some 14- or 15-year-old orders coffee in one of today’s coffee houses. Coffee was an adult drink in my youth. In college I seldom touched the stuff, except the Sunday morning following a Saturday night quaffing a certain malt beverage. And maybe the night before mid-terms or finals. But it was not my drink of choice during meals. Milk was.
Not that I didn’t frequent a coffee house or two in my early adulthood. But a Fifties’ coffee house in no way resembled today’s stand-in-line, paper-cup take-out, sterilized and institutionalized plastic-decorated java pits that are popping up on almost every street corner. Coffee houses then were singular entities where poets and artists and musicians and Beatniks and we wannabees--students--gathered. And, maybe, an occasional radical or two. Waiters took our orders and served the coffee in mugs. Customers relaxed in comfortable chairs. We mused and sipped coffee. We chatted and sipped coffee. We listened to jazz and sipped coffee. Of course we smoked cigarettes--almost everyone did then--and sipped coffee.
In Capitola, where I reside today, one of Northern California’s most popular coffee houses opened in early 1958 just a few months after I turned 21--the Coffee Cabaret. When the clubs and bars in nearby Santa Cruz closed at 2 a.m., night owls flocked to Capitola’s after-hours hot spot where musicians jammed and young folks danced. Even the late Herb Caen, the definitive three-dot columnist of the San Francisco Chronicle, visited the Coffee Cabaret and plugged it in one of his daily pieces.
But it became too popular. In the early evening, before the bar crowd showed up, teenagers hung out there and local residents began complaining about the noise and nontraditional vibes they thought the underage crowd was experiencing in such a den of iniquity. City Hall eventually forced its closure. I don’t know whether any funny cigarettes were ever inhaled there, but I suspect some patrons did smuggle in bottled booze secreted in brown paper bags or purses to spike their coffee.
Even during my two-year ordeal working for Uncle Sam (1958-60), I avoided coffee like a goldbrick dodging a first sergeant on the prowl for unsuspecting “volunteers.” A huge canister of a gut-corroding liquid that went by the name of coffee was always available in the mess hall during the day, guzzled mostly by career sergeants. In my outfit, a bunch of us draftees would sit around after supper swapping stories, puffing cigarettes and swigging milk.
In 1965, a newly hired young reporter at the newspaper I toiled for persuaded me to join him frequently in the lunchroom for a smoke and some black liquid brewed in a vending machine. I was now 28. And I was hooked. In retrospect, it wasn’t the tastiest stuff I ever swallowed but it worked wonders in keeping body and brain functioning at full speed day after day.
Not until 1975, when I packed up my family and moved to Germany to work for an English-language magazine published for U.S. troops and their families stationed in Europe, did I learn how coffee should really taste. Every cup at every Gasthaus and pastry shop we visited was individually made. Always flavorful. Always aromatic. Always packing a powerful punch. Even the German versions of Starbucks--Eduscho and Tschibo--made each cup individually. I became more than hooked. I became addicted, downing 10 to 12 cups a day at the office. Of course it took at least two or three bottles of even-better German beer each evening after work to bring me down from my daily caffeine highs.
On returning to the states in late ’79, I had difficulty finding a really good cup of coffee. Although founded in 1971, Starbucks hadn’t yet installed a quick-stop outlet in every nook and cranny of America. Luckily, I found an excellent German brand, Jacob’s, at my local supermarket, and it became my coffee of choice at home until the modern-day coffee houses began springing up everywhere. Even the donut shop I frequented for 15 years started serving what it termed “gourmet” coffee a few years ago.
As fickle as a former Democratic senator turned Independent, I flitted from local coffee house to coffee house after retiring. I did nationwide chains as well as non-affiliates. I eventually settled permanently at a tiny spot called Grinds in Capitola, which I pass by on my daily walks. Owned and operated by a young couple named Devona and Brandon, their little coffee house contains only three tables--two inside, one outside. But it has character. Antique and collectible coffee memorabilia adorn the place
Grinds creates all those fancy coffee drinks, but, get this, they make EACH regular cup of coffee individually. Every time! It doesn’t get any fresher than that. There’s no canister containing regular coffee standing behind the counter with a sign attached, “Made Fresh Every 30 Minutes.” Unlike wine, coffee deteriorates with time, even over short periods of time.
Located at 311 Capitola Ave. near City Hall, Grinds has only been in business for a year and a half. But Grinds has won over a lot of us locals.
Maybe some day I’ll ask Brandon and Devona to concoct a latte or a mocha for me. And maybe later I’ll move up to a capuccino or a frappuccino, whatever they are and however they’re spelled. Maybe I might even try drinking one of those mixtures with a meal. But until then, I’ll stick with my life-long drink of choice: Milk.
©2006 by Len Klempnauer. The cartoon is from IMSI'S Master Clips Collection, 1895 Francisco Blvd. E., San Rafael, CA, 94901-5506, USA. This column first posted Nov. 13, 2006.
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