Sunday, June 16, 2013

Isn't This a Cute Coffee Shop? Let's Go In!

Look at this picture from a cute, hip coffee shop in a newly-gentrified neighbourhood:


Cute, no? That's two espressos and a caramel brownie right there. 

The place had a children's corner where all the newly-moved-in hipsters could let their kids play with educational toys and read educational books while they had their coffees and cakes and paninis made with natural, locally-sourced, organic ingredients and only the best roasted beans.

The brownie was good. 

The coffee though...what can one say about the coffee?

How about: OMIGOD THIS WAS THE WORST COFFEE I EVER HAD!

Seriously, it was disgusting. Neither of us could drink it. It tasted like when you accidentally put Taster's Choice coffee into a stovetop espresso machine (yes, this has happened to me). In fact, it tasted worse than Taster's Choice instant coffee.

This was surprising since the entire coffee-making process was automated. They had a fully automatic push-button espresso machine. The grinder and doser were automated, grinding and dosing out the exact amount of coffee for a single shot at the push of a button. 

The only variables were the beans and the tamping. They over-tamped the coffee, but that couldn't explain the awfulness of the stuff. No, the awfulness had to have come from the beans or the grind. My guess is that the beans were bad/stale, and the grind was too coarse. 

But that doesn't really matter, does it? Because the fact remained that we paid $5 for undrinkable espressos.

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