Taste and Toss Ritual

One of the travel rituals that Jonathan and I developed when visiting new cities together was to visit a new coffee shop each morning. We would look up places that had espresso drinks, walk to the shop, order drinks (he would have an espresso drink, I would have a tea), and have a lovely start to the day. We toured a lot of coffee shops. I would leave reviews on the coffee shops about their tea selection and how good the teas were. I would often try Jonathan's drink when he offered it to me, but continued to nope out of the coffee culture. I was the most-learned non-coffee-drinker espresso expert you could find.

Eventually I drifted towards actively asking to taste Jonathan's coffee drinks, always a cortado, tasting them, and noping them back to him. Over the last 7 years, I had had 3 cortados that were not sour (Portland, ALLLL your espressos are sours), and not bitter (pretty much every place that isn't a third-wave or doesn't specifically care about their espresso quality). Matthew and I discussed espresso modifications in Japan, with his many years of practical experience removing some of the gaps in my book knowledge.

I've continued the ritual of visiting espresso places. These days, I order a cortado and a tea drink for myself, continuing to taste and toss the cortados and enjoying the tea drink. Every once in a while, however, a cortado won't be too bitter, and I will have a bit more than a taste, a bit more than a sip. Every once in a very rare while, I will actually finish the drink. I am surprised every time these happen. If I can, I go back to the cafe to see if the perfect cortado was a fluke. Mostly, they have been, with repeated cortados being good, but not perfect.

Here in New York City this week, I recruited coworkers on my espresso adventures. "You want to go to a different place this morning? What was wrong with yesterday's?" they ask. They have yet to ask why I keep tossing the drink. "I don't like coffee."

I did have one repeat yesterday, however, when I slept in and was going to be late for a meeting. We met up at 787 Coffee, which is close to the office and a find for the regulars. "How are you finding these places?" "How didn't we know about this place?" No idea that last one.

This morning, however, none of my coworkers were going into the office, so I was on my own. Which worked just fine for me, as it gave me a chance to visit two shops today. They were both highly rated by multiple map apps and city guides. First up was, unsurprisingly, Seven Grams. I had been there with Jonathan before in June, it was highly rated on all of the apps I checked, even the ones that are dying next month, and close. I was quite delighted when I saw their cookies, too. The cortado, as my tip from June says, varied by barista, with this one being just slightly on the side of bitter. The bitter flavors were, however, a lovely deep chocolate flavor. I sat and drank half of the cortado, noting how the flavors changed as it cooled (and, let's be real, I developed saiety of taste). If I liked coffee, I'd have finished this one.

Before the coffee got cold (heh), I left the cafe to go to Stumptown closeby. This one confused me a bit, being a Portland coffee shop to me. I guess if Blue Bottle can have a NYC presence, Stumptown can have a NYC, too. This one was next to the Ace Hotel, so I have walked by it I don't know how many times on trips to NYC with Jonathan. I finally ordered a cortado there.

The cafe was full of a lot of people, so I masked up and didn't stay past receiving my order. I tasted it outside, and again, had a not-that-bitter cortado.

I feel both of these cafes had their espressos this close to being dialed in, a phrase I'm not thrilled about when mountaineering, but makes COMPLETE SENSE when making espressos. Or maybe they had their espressos dialed in to a taste that I don't like? Matthew commented that one of my cortadoes in Osaka was sour, when I thought it was a hint to bitter (I finished that one). So, maybe my preferred taste is complete neutral as Defined by Kitt™. Who knows.

After having most of a cortado from Seven Grams, then most of a cortado from Stumptown, I had clearly a over-caffeinated experience walking back to my hotel. Working in this state is A THING. I giggled remembering when Jonathan first brought his espresso machine home and made 12 espressos the first day, drinking many of them fully, before realizing that maybe that wasn't such a good idea, drinking all the practice drinks.

Work for the next couple hours was productive, at least.