Archive for May, 2008

These days I usually buy a coffee on my way into work - and that means most days. It feels very extravagant to spend £1.50 most mornings on a drink I could so easily make myself at home or once I got into the office. But it feels invigorating to walk up to my desk with the steaming ‘tall’ paper cup and the aroma of fresh coffee wafting up to wake me up. It also makes me smile to exchange inconsequential banter with the baristas at the local café who are now familiar with my regular morning stop-off on my way in from the suburbs.

I would never have bought a cup of coffee so easily or so readily in England 10 years ago. Back then, the UK was still a staunchly tea drinking nation and it was a rare thing to be able to get a good cup of coffee anywhere. You would be served instant or some semblance of filter coffee that was stewed too long and sour or so weak that it was tasteless. Either way it was disgusting. One time, I ordered a coffee in Hay-on-Wye, booklovers capital of the UK, in a wannabe trendy café-bookshop which had one of those fancy Italian cappuccino-making machines. The coffee here should be good, I thought.

But here is how they served me: they poured some thick cold coffee ’stock’ which they had boiled down in a coffee filter pot into a cup and added hot water from a kettle. It was the most hideous concoction I had ever tasted. And they were a bit miffed when I demanded my money back.

And then along came the Seattle Coffee Company that made fresh coffee, latte, cappuccino and all the other varieties that we’ve become familiar with. It was bliss, walking into their slick, clean, minimalist outlets and ordering coffee exactly how you want it, with all the associated lingo: skinny, wet, dry… The company was soon taken over by Starbucks, which then proliferated all London and eventually throughout the UK. I hope there’s now one in Hay-on-Wye.

Many people complain that Starbucks, as a global chain, destroys the local economy and makes every high street look the same and have the same shops. For me the significance of Starbucks in the UK is that it has raised the standards of coffee everywhere. For awhile after they arrived, you still could not get a decent coffee in restaurants and cafes - they would stare at you blankly if you asked for an Americano or bring you a weak cafetiere coffee or slop some thick filter into a cup for you. But it wasn’t long before most places realised that they had to keep up with the times and invest in the big Italian coffee machine contraption that hisses and spurts steaming water and milk into freshly ground coffee. Nowadays, you can usually be assured of good coffee wherever you are in the UK - and it’s a delight.

Photo: thanks to Roberat on Flickr.com (CCL)