UNESCO recently declared Viennese Coffee House Culture as “Intangible Cultural Heritage” which evidently means the practice is somewhat special and worthy of mention (and perhaps preserving).
But, come to think of it, where folks take their coffee is really and truly a sign of the values of a culture. I was thinking this as I was awaiting my simple cappuccino at Koffi, a wonderful Palm Springs coffee house. The reason I was thinking while waiting was because the waiting part was so much longer than the waiting part in a caffe in Italy, and thus the flood gates to my active imagination were opened by the rusty mental wrench of boredom; dangerous, to be sure.
Being a journalist, I used the time to analyze the actions of the Barista at Koffi. And there he was before me, flailing away, elbows flying like a fiddler’s at a dance. All this motion to make a coffee drink was new to me. There wasn’t the elegant flow of an Italian fronting the gleaming machine with a tiny cup of perfect brew cradled in his hairy sausage fingers.
What caused all this animation? Well, it’s the choices. You can’t, of course, get a single cappuccino at Koffi. No, the small is a double. This is America. We have big coffee. Live with it.
So here’s the thing. The Barista can’t just shove the Koffi cup under the spigot like an Italian would do. You’ve got to direct two streams of coffee into two metal containers, one for each dose. The humongous cup you’re about to receive with your cappuccino lolling about in it is the size of something maybe destitute giants would demand at their local soup kitchen. It could double as a helmet, in case of enemy fire or heavy rain. In any case, it couldn’t be shoved under those delicate spigots without doing them grave harm.
Once the coffee is unloaded into the big cup-pot from its two cute metal holding pitchers, it’s time for the foaming milk stage. In Italy, the barista has a big pot of warm milk with foam by his side, a tiny portion of which he instantly nudges into a cup on request, stopping to give the pot a shot of steam if you ask for your cappuccino “caldo” or hot. Impossible in America, where folks ask for low fat, non fat, one percent, two percent, fat, soy, and other things only remotely related to a cow’s teat-squeezings (or not at all). Sometimes folks ask for a combination of the real and the imaginary milks. (The three calories they save with this strategy means they can have an extra half-teaspoon of Budweiser with their next meal, which will undoubtedly consist of something deep fat fried.) In any case, the coffee guy has to lift gigantic containers of real milk and fake milk as the customer has demanded it, checking the ticket to get the right proportions, and pour them into the foaming container. Then he foams away, a fresh foam for every order.
All of this takes much time, of course, which is probably why you need a coffee so large you can hardly gather the strength to lug it to a table. Nobody would want to go through such time-consuming nonsense again.
So, anthropologically speaking, we can draw from this the conclusion that real Americans value choice over, well, tradition. If I were a real coffee curmudgeon, I’d say they valued choice over the taste of coffee.
Well, ok then: I’m a real coffee curmudgeon.
Really, my coffee was fine. Next time I might try the half goat milk half yak butter with sprinkles version though.
I suggest you dip your toes into the various types of coffee culture in Europe, from the elegance of Vienna’s Coffee Houses, to a different type of elegance in the Caffes of Turin. Then stop in a working man’s joint and have a coffee. It’s different. And we celebrate differences, don’t we?
Shouldn’t we? Because coffee is big all over.