The Boston Globe was right: they make good coffee at Simon's Coffee Shop at 1736 Mass Ave, Cambridge. But ... a paper cup for good espresso? Not so good. It's the often-downfall of American coffee shops that want to both make good coffee and serve the "to-go" crowd. Customer service, people. If they're drinking in, crockery ... It's not hard.
One place they get it right is the newly (3 weeks ago) opened Kopplin's coffee shop at Randolph and Hamline in Saint Paul. The espresso was excellent. Andrew Kopplin, the owner, apologized for drawing it a little long, but I prefer it long. I grew up on the long black after all. All in all, great ambience, great coffee.
The American coffee shop is an interesting thing. Whenever my father visits this country he's struck by the number of people who work in coffee shops. Working alone and in groups. Even before free wireless access. And when a lot of those people are consuming a 64oz gulper of burnt filter coffee I suppose you have to stay a while just to finish it.
Now, by contrast, you don't see many laptops and notebooks in an Australasian coffee shop. This has something to do with wireless being less ubiqitious, but that's not all. Coffee is more exclusively a social thing. That's another nice thing about the long black; it's both espresso and the time to drink it coincides nicely with getting into a conversation.
When Americans serve espresso they serve it short. It's good, don't get me wrong, but the trouble with a short espresso is it's over so quickly. You can't nurse your short espresso for a couple of hours while sitting there doing some work. So, the American espresso conflicts a little with the stay-a-while culture of American coffee shops.
One thing I've always wondered about this stay-a-while culture is how much the implicit price of a seat in the cafe varies by location and time of day. How much do you have to buy before they suggest you get something else. In New Zealand they seem to expect more turnover in the seats at coffee shops, and I have occasionally been asked if I'd like something else because it's getting busy now and it's an hour since I last bought something. Which is not what you'd necessarily expect, that American businesses would be less pushy about making you keep buying. But that is one of the paradoxes of American life; that in some ways life is very commercialized and yet there are pockets of American life that are less overtly commercial like Christmas and coffee shops.
Posted by eroberts at May 11, 2006 6:53 AM