Thursday, January 24, 2008
Starbucks and Birds
More evidence, if any were needed, that whatever it is Starbucks are selling, it sure ain't coffee. Why do people drink these vile megaconcoctions of cowjuice and sugar? We Brits have never been good with coffee - in my boyhood milky instant was the norm (remember Birds? a powder sold on the basis that it had no taste whatsoever) and ground coffee was an exotic rarity - and the coming of Starbucks to these shores seems to be driving us back to our ancestral milkiness. This leaves unsolved the abiding mystery of why Bryan is always hanging around in Starbucks...
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A blog about, among other things, imaginary ideas - What ifs? and Imagine thats. What if photographs looked nothing like what we see with our eyes? Imagine that the Berlin Wall had never come down. What if we were the punchline of an interminable joke? All contributions welcome.
The starbucks question represents a microcosm of all that is wrong with our country at this juncture in time. The coffee is bad, burnt and cold, the atmosphere is stale, a theme park of what a café should be. It’s all marketing and branding and cheesy mantras. It’s America. We need small individual cafes making proper (small) cappuccinos and decent fresh food, places that stay open beyond 18:00 where people can gather and talk and read, places where culture can breed, the way it breeds in Europe. Our lack of café culture is a prime cause of binge drinking. All said and done, cafes should be the best places for boys to meet girls and vice versa, not outside the off-license between robberies or crawling through the vomit polished dance floor of the local wetherspoons.
ReplyDeleteI completely agree with you, Nige. I used to be one of those lost souls who would dash into the nearest branch of Starbucks before getting to the office. I can't say I actually much liked what I bought there, but it was better than the stuff that came out of the office canteen. However, I do think one can take coffee fetishism too far. I am now married to a man who will not countenance having instant coffee in the house. He won't even settle for ready-ground coffee. It has to be beans. And not beans from a supermarket, you understand. They have to come from Mr Matthew in Cambridge market: continental blend for daytime use and an espresso blend for the evening. If we run out and have to resort to inferior beans there is always whingeing. But now, in an act of small rebellion, I have secretly bought a little jar of instant for the days when I simply cannot be arsed to deal with all the paraphernalia. It sits in the back of a cupboard and if challenged I shall say it is for making cake.
ReplyDeleteIt is getting a lot worse. Spain is full of Starbucks. The day they spread in Italy, I move to the moon..
ReplyDeleteMy relationship with Starbucks is history. i have a Nespresso machine.
ReplyDeleteThere are two reasons why bland, standard mega-chains like MacDonald's, Starbucks, etc. are driving out the local, distinctive establishments of our blessed youthful memories. The first, of course, is that the juggernaut of American financial and cultural imperialism is marching inexorably around the globe cutting huge swaths of uniformity and banality out of the richness and variety of indigenous, time-honoured fare. The second is that an awful lot of the traditional stuff was crap and folks like the new stuff better.
ReplyDeleteTrue enough Peter - but there's bad new stuff and good new stuff, and in coffee terms Starbucks is way behind Costa, Caffe Nero, Ritazza, in fact everybody... And Bryan, I am shocked - I'd have thought that piece in the FT would have put you off Nespresso for life...
ReplyDeleteStarbucks is the new Main Street for 20-somethings and under. I hate their coffee, but I do like their black tea (iced, unsweetened, undiluted with extra water). My teenage daughter, however, loves all those milky, sugary concoctions and spends $ there every day. It's a rip-off, methinks, but it's obviously not just about the beverage.
ReplyDeleteStarbucks' cafes offer places to sit, read, and people-watch. They have food with lots of sugar and caffeine. They offer wireless internet connections; they have windows out onto the bustling streets of the city or the windswept parking lots of suburbia.
Humans are pack animals and Starbucks packs 'em in. C'est tout.
We have a Starbucks in dear old Dublin too. I have been there once. I had ducked in out of the rain. However, somebody stole my newspaper when I nipped away to do my ablutions. So I have not returned. Mind you, it's located in quite a nice spot, in the shadow of Gandon's splendid former Houses of Parliament building, now a bank, and across the road from the equally splendid front gate of Trinity College on College Green. So, despite the coffee being deplorable, the views are rather agreeable (if you have no newspaper to read).
ReplyDeleteThis leaves unsolved the abiding mystery of why Bryan is always hanging around in Starbucks...
ReplyDeleteIt may seem far-fetched,Nige, but I have a private suspicion, that the reason Bryan is always hanging around Starbucks, may well have its roots in the fact that the solar system harbours fewer than one ten-billionth of the total number of Starbucks estimated to exist, and that far from discovering life on Mars, Starbucks may well have put it there...
As for the coffee, I think it is very good, but then, being a Starbucks’ regular, I would, wouldn't I.
Dreamy
O Selena - another illusion shattered - I'd never have guessed you were the Starbucks type...
ReplyDeleteNeil has hit the nail firmly on the head. The damned corporate giants have the money to buy the best locations and as any cafe lover knows, location is more than half of the game.
ReplyDeleteIn the United States, since Starbucks began expanding, independent coffee houses have increased 40%. (Most aren't very good, but most weren't all that good before Starbucks, either.)Before the advent of Starbucks, it was next to impossible to find a coffee house in most US cities. It was quite difficult to find whole beans as well. The typical cup of coffee in a restaurant or coffee shop was so bad that Folger's Instant could run ads showing customers in high-end NYC restaurants not noticing, even raving about, the instant coffee that replaced the regular fare.
ReplyDeleteAs one who has used whole beans to make coffee for 30+ years, and roasted my own on and off for the past 10, I have no great objection to Starbucks coffee. Some prefer a city roast and not Starbucks' darker roast (some need the higher caffeine present in lighter roasts too, it appears).
But it sounds like you are not really talking about the coffee, but the silly drinks posing as coffee. I rarely drink those. But, unless you are in Italy or Japan, and maybe France, whatever place you are going to instead is probably not much better. Stick to the coffee wherever you go. Make your hot chocolate from scratch at home (it's very easy) and call it a mocha (because that is what it basically is).
I'm a tea drinker myself but I do remember Camp coffee, which was a bottled liquid, mixed with ice cold milk as a kid. I don't suppose you get it in Starbucks.
ReplyDeletetrampmajor, proper cappuccinos [sic] should never be drunk after 11.00 - even if the establishment remains open. ;o)
Ian, as a tea-drinker, do you use loose leaves or bags? PG Tips, Tetleys, Twinings, Typhoo, or Taylors? Does it matter? More importantly, lemon or milk? If milk, before or after? (And whats with all the "T's" in tea manufacturer names?)
ReplyDeleteDoes anyone know if Starbucks coffee varies from joint to joint? The ones i've had from Leeds & Manchester were awful but are they all made to the same specs?
ReplyDeleteelberry: In theory, they are all made to spec. Some places are better than others, human nature being what it is. Your best bet is to order the smallest of any drink (such as cappucino or latte) and ask for it in a ceramic cup. (They all have them, but most people want it "to go" so they won't use them unless asked.) In my experience, a little more care often goes into the making when a cup & saucer are used. (It is a bit rich to expect a latte or cappucino of superior quality poured into a paper cup, then taken away and consumed elsewhere sometime later. Coffee is at its peak in flavor @ 195 degrees, IIRC, rapidly deteriorating as it quickly cools.)
ReplyDeleteAs for the Starbucks roast that people often complain about as being too dark. If one is drinking coffee only, the point is eminently debatable. If one is drinking a cappucino, mocha or latte, then I wonder what on earth they are talking about? Espresso roasts, French roasts, and even Italian roasts are darker still (thus roasted longer) and espresso roast should be the only roast used in creating those drinks. As it is, Starbucks roasts most of their coffees about the Italian roast standard.
I'm not saying Starbucks is the world's finest coffee. It isn't. Or their cappucinos and lattes top of the line - they can't compare to an experienced and talented "barista" with an old-fashioned machine, and small servings consumed on-site. Those are rare and always have been, and expensive.
randy, bags, Twinings, yes, milk, after, coincidence.
ReplyDeleteI saw a small pot-cup combo in Barcelona Duty Free this month that I almost bought because though I use bags for speed and convenience - my wife and I have different preferences, she Earl Grey, me Assam - I do think you get a better cup from loose leaves. We have tried those little mesh spheres for leaves but they were too much trouble.
If you must, 'to go' is surely more preferable to 'drinking in' - those places (UK at least) are so unwelcoming. Faces like slapped arses springs to mind - and the atmosphere is choking. And why do their hot ciabatta rolls arrive looking like they've been reheated by placing them under the backside of mr. creosote? It's a poor experience all round.
ReplyDeleteIan, thanks for wiping my behind. I am well aware of coffee etiquette. I have lived in italy, where you are sneered upon as stranieri for even suggesting cappuccinos after la prima collazione. I think the role starbucks has played in bringing real coffee and a modest sense of cafe culture to the UK and the US cannot be denied but we have a duty to evolve and to advance and we are way behind our European cousins. I think the first real improvement starbucks could make is to join cafe nero and start using proper coffee cups and saucers not those cumbersome mugs. Coffee is essentially about a sensual experience and the more senses engaged in the act, the more pleasure and resonance the experience retains.
ReplyDelete'Colazione' not 'collazione', Tramp Major, and what are you doing commenting when you should be temping? Get back to temping for your minimum wage pittance!
ReplyDeleteThe whole cafe culture and the passeggiata custom, walking abroad of a evening, with minimal alcohol consumption, is alien to English 'culture'. In Italy people go out to sit in public and drink their good coffees, to see & be seen; it implies a civilisation in which you can amicably meet other human beings and don't need to sit with your back to the pub wall, a bottle in one hand (as in Bradford).
In England, 'going out' is all about piling into the nearest pub, getting fucked on the cheapest skank piss available to Geordiekind, and then sallying forth en masse to attack anyone on his own while bellowing the Match of the Day theme and screaming "Becks!" and "Cernunnos!" and "Jamie Oliver!" these being the English Gods of War.
When i was in Italy i declined alcohol at a party, as i hadn't eaten in ages. The Italians nodded understandingly, approving my restraint, and said, "Of course, you are English. You start drinking and cannot stop."
Ian, those mesh sphere always seemed a pain the arse to me, too. I thought maybe it was because I started drinking tea in Hong Kong, where loose leaves were the general rule.
ReplyDeleteI'm glad to hear someone likes Twinings. For some reason, a lot of people over here think of it as the tea equivalent of a Starbucks roast. Oil of bergamot just doesn't do it for me, so Earl Grey is off my list. I like Assam, too.
Trampmajor: Well said. But that would take a wholesale change in societal attitudes, as elberry notes. Unfortunately, Starbucks reflects American culture more than its original intent (the Italian cafe experience). "Hurry up!" "Super-size it NOW!" "Let me take it away and drink alone in my car." As almost all the costs are labor and location (the beans themselves are a negigible factor), I imagine they tested just how small a small could be before people objected to the price necessary to cover the costs + profit. I do know that the extra cost of providing the two larger sizes is piddling. IIRC, Tim Hardin, "The Undercover Economist" at the FT has written about this.
Elberry: Meant to say the other day, your best chance of getting a good cup of coffee, not a coffee drink, at Starbucks is to ask for an Americano. It will be made with Espresso roast, but at least it will be made at the moment you request it. Just a thought.
Is that bergamot in Earl Grey? I hated it for years 'cause thought it tasted like soap. Now it doesn't bug me...must be old taste buds.
ReplyDeleteBut, Darjeeling darling, that is the tea for me!
Sounds like you're higher class than Ian & I, Susan! Or is that on a higher elevation? *LOL* As I'll like as not reach for Irish Breakfast first, I'm probably a cut below Ian, as who knows what gets mixed in with the Assam. (I enjoy Darjeeling, too, BTW. It is, in fact, my favorite of the moment.)
ReplyDeletei have only 3 words on the subject of Earl Gray:
ReplyDeleteJean Luc Picard