Now that is some old-fashioned, unapologetic, unreconstructed snobbery! I love it.

My wife works at a small coffee-importing company. I'm scared to let her read this for fear she'll take the next flight to Austin and cuckold me.

www.grist.org

...but snobbery with a populist bent. I wish everyone could be exposed to good coffee. One of my first and most powerful memories of Italy is from the dingy and rundown train station in Trieste--an egregiously underrated city, and may it stay that way, so as not to be swamped by tourists (there goes that snobbery again.) In that station, everyone from the guy pushing the train- station broom to fellows in flashy suits on their way to cutting deals in Rome were queuing up for spectacular Illy espressos. IN A TRAIN STATION! It was breathtaking. And there's no reason it couldn't be that way in Topeka, Kansas. Of course, first we'd have to get a functional train system...

There I go breaking Godwin's law again.

Years ago I was in Madrid on holiday over Thanksgiving week (a great time to travel to Europe BTW; not a single American in sight!). My Spanish was pretty limited then (and not much better now) but I still tried to be polite and speak the native tongue.

So, I sidle in a bar at about 11am (well, you know, time change, vacation, etc) with my girlfriend and it is cold & rainy and we want a drink.  Seemed a bit early in the day for cerveza or Rioja and somehow we remembered how to say "Irish coffee" in Spanish: cafe Irlandes.

Little did we know that the proper construction of an Irish coffee in a Madrid bar takes approximately 25 minutes, involves a complicated array of brewing espresso, heating whiskey & sugar in a spoon, warming cream, and piling the whole concoction OH SO carefully so that the layers do not mix.  It was truly fascinating to watch.

Upon finally being delivered our masterpieces, we, philistines that we were, instantly dunked a spoon in the drink and stirred.  The bartender quite literally turned white with shock, yelled out a bunch of Spanish expletives and promptly took our drinks away from us.  He then painstakingly and 25-minutely made us brand new Irish coffees and proceeded to instruct us (in broken Spanglish) as to how to properly drink one (you sort of sip the coffee & whiskey through the layer of cream, without disturbing any of the layers) and also to stand over us and watch us to make sure we had it right.  He then refused to let us leave the bar until we had the proper pronunciation of IrLANdes (from the diaphragm, girls!).

We left him a huge tip.

I've always considered Starbucks as the Mikhail Gorbachev of qualty coffee's perestroika. The parallel today being that Starbucks is about as relevant to the popular advancement of quality coffee as Gorby is to the advancement of the USSR-...er...I mean Russian-politik. But they certainly were instrumental in some of the early stages.

If people want coffee-scented milkshakes lathered in syrup and whipped cream -- more power to them. I still believe there are millions of people who think they've experienced the pinnacle of what great espresso could be and yet haven't even come close, not making it past a Starbucks "double-tall, four-pump vanilla caramel macchiato" -- and that much is a shame. But there's going to be those who prefer liquid candy anyway. No harm done, and for the rest of us, the chances of finding at least adequate espresso has gone up all over this country. Net result: still pretty good.

As for Illy, they're more like an American garage heavy metal band -- i.e., "We're big in Europe." Illy has set the standard for quality controls. And in Europe (cafés and beans), it shows in the product (e.g., their Espressamente cafés). But in the U.S., I don't care how air tight you make the can, shipping fresh roasted coffee thousands and thousands of miles from Trieste means serious flavor loss. As a result, I've found that Illy in the U.S. is a mere shadow of how it tastes in Europe.

-- ^sv

Congratulations to Tom, for discovering la gioia d'uno splendido caffe` in both Austin and Trieste.  But as I wrote on an earlier occasion, he has not done anything to explain the different ways that Americans and Italians drink coffee.  That, it seems to me, should be essential to any meaningful discussion of coffee, the way it is presented, and the way it is drunk.

For starters, espresso and cappuccino are totally different coffee beverages, taken in totally different contexts, usually (in Italy) at different hours of the day, with different accompanying foods.

The photograph of the full cup of cappuccino, with the design marvelously appearing in the foam, looks like something that would certainly have appealed to the Medici Grand Dukes of Tuscany.

But, in fact, I consider the addition of milk to coffee a kind of pollution.  I have never in my life ever had a "latte," and do not want to have such an experience.

As I believe I wrote once before, I am like Balzac: I take my coffee black and bitter (sans sucre), even as my sinful soul is black and bitter.

But really, we need to establish what are American habits regarding coffee consumption -- well, assuming that many of us readers of Gristmill are American -- , before we can begin to pontificate about what is "good" or "not good" coffee.

One little example: I have no idea whatsoever of how Americans consume espresso in demitasse.  And why.  And when.  I would be most grateful to Tom, if he could explain.  We just saw a wonderful little black comedy from 1990, "The Freshman," with Marlon Brando and Matthew Broderick, in which espresso figures.

To Kaela: Thanks for that interesting Madrid narrative.  Stunning athletic red-heads clearly get away with a lot in Mediterranean countries.  Normally in Spanish, the accent on the word for "Irish" is on the last syllable: ir-lan-DES.  If you heard different, that is worth reporting.

Frankly, I would have just ordered a Jerez and a tea, and ignored those complicated coffee concoctions that one does not dare stir with a spoonlet.

Chickens are our cousins! So are other sensitive animals! Enough is enough! No more factory farms!

Ironically, many third wave coffee roasters and cafes owe their existence to the mediocrity of Starbucks.  I know we all love to bash the mean Mermaid, but she was instrumental in getting Americans off the canned Robusta that passed for coffee in this country when I was growing up (in the 60s and 70s).  After Starbucks' success was established, it was only a matter of time before a few mavericks set out to reach the next level in the realm of quality coffee.  And thus, Third Wave coffee was born.  Most third wavers I know are not even afraid of a Starbucks moving into their area.  It is as if they are selling two completely different things.  I suppose they are really.  Once you've tried a ground to order, hand-tamped, perfectly extracted espresso or cappuccino (like the one pictured above), why would anyone go back to the vending machine espresso that Starbucks peddles?

BTW, to Gregory's list (above) must be added Flying Goat Coffee in Healdsburg.  Their bars offer two espresso blends (chosen according to the amount of milk in the drink) and both are ORGANIC and FAIR-TRADE CERTIFIED (this is supposed to be "environmental" commentary after all)!  

Also, what's with the Illy infatuation? Especially when there are so many (better) espresso blends being roasted right here in the good ol' USA.  And, I agree with gregs: by the time Illy arrives in the U.S. it's stale (despite their high-priced vacuum sealed packaging). And think of all the resources wasted in getting that small can of coffee to us. Third wave coffee is (supposed to be) about local and fresh.

OK, now I'm going surfing!

Agreed about Illy's the the U.S. Any cafe serving it here lacks imagination, not to mention a commitment to sustainability and best quality. However, in the train station of Illy's home town, Trieste, it's pretty magical stuff.