Coffee, anyone?

It’s getting hard to find a decent cup of coffee in this town any more. There was a time you could walk into any restaurant, order “coffee”, and be reasonably assured that you would get hot water that had been strained through some kind of coffee beans, was served in a cup, and cost less than a buck.
The only difference in coffee served in these establishments was that it came in varying strengths. Ask for coffee late in the afternoon, and chances were that the pot had been on the burner all day and would deliver a jolt of high octane coffee that could keep a truck driver awake from London to Moncton.
The best coffee in the world came from Tim Horton’s. Still does, as far as I’m concerned. I have no idea how they do it. I have tried making Tim Horton's coffee at home, and it just doesn’t taste the same. They are not paying me to say this, by the way.
The absolutely worst coffee in the world comes from those machines still lurking in the musty corners of aging bus stations and darkened hallways of ancient manufacturing plants, machines that were designed by some Frankenstein of an inventor to dispense coffee, hot chocolate and what was euphemistically called chicken soup, all through the same spout. Everything delivered by these machines looks like dishwater and tastes like cod liver oil.
Over the past few years there has been an alarming trend away from “coffee”. Go into coffee shops these days and order “coffee”, and you are likely to encounter a perplexed and slightly supercilious (from the Latin “super” meaning “you”, and “cilious” meaning “moron”) look from the “waitperson”.
“Would that be a cappuccino, double orange mocha-chino, café latte, regular, with or without cinnamon and/or chocolate sprinkles, single or double espresso, long or short, with or without foam, in a mug or glass with whipping cream…?”
“Coffee” is not even on the menu – and whoever heard of needing a “menu” to list coffees anyway?
It was OK when cappuccino and espresso started showing up as regular fare in restaurants and coffee shops. We’ve all had days when we’ve needed a little extra caffeine kick in the pants of the kind those drinks deliver. And a double espresso on a February Monday morning can actually make the sun come out and the birds sing, at least until the headache sets in. But we are talking coffee here, people, not desert!
A few years ago, a friend of mine was given a home espresso machine for Christmas, and he invited me over to try to figure out how the thing worked. By the time we had learned how to mix the right amount of water and coffee we had consumed enough caffeine that we decided to wallpaper the living room, build a deck on the back of the house and detail his car while we were at it. It was a great afternoon, but I would not recommend it as part of a regular diet.
The height of the current coffee-as-food craze in all the new specialty coffee shops that are popping up everywhere has to be the decaf cappuccino. This is an oxymoron by its very definition: high-test coffee without the kick - like gasoline that won’t burn, or cigarettes without tobacco. I don’t mind the fact that the stuff is being served, I just wish the restaurants would remember to put a pot of real coffee on in the morning as well – and then leave it on the back-burner for the afternoon when I really need it.
Wide awake and ready to go,
I’m Otte Rosenkrantz