Hey, There's a Tourist...
Shortly before my moving to NYC, my friend M. a native New Yorker residing in Brooklyn gave me a few surviving tips including this one, if I didn't want to be mistaken for an annoying newcomer:
M. says: "If you want to have coffee, you go to a nearby corner deli. Go straight to the counter, and say: 'Coffee, with milk, no sugar.' No need to say hello, don't say thanks, just hand your dollar bill and leave. Don't try to be polite, don't say: hello, I'd like a cup of coffee please, with a bit of milk, I won't take sugar, thank you... There are thousands of people waiting behind you. Just take your cup and MOVE. Understand??"
Me: "uh..huh..."
And so I did, on my first encounter with the deli guy behind the counter selling his morning coffee on Amsterdam and 116th. (Thank you Hamilton Deli for your long-term service.) The only difference was that the deli guy asked me whether I wanted small, medium or large... I therefore had to enter into a deep consideration as to the appropriate size of the coffee cup. I was freshfly arriving from a country where coffee cups are as small as a teaspoon and coffee as bitter as a bad cough medicine.... What the....!!
Another coffee ordering experience, this time in Palm Beach Gardens, FL, where I was visiting my friend Ruth, a true Southerner who moved to Florida a decade ago. There we go to a Dunkin' Donuts' store along the highway, temperature as high as 100F (i.e., about 40 C), my friend all jolly and with impeccable make-up on, and me, disgustingly looking and dying of heat... I wanted my coffee, immediately. There she was, behind the counter, a nice-looking Dunkin' Donuts' salesperson smiling and saying: "How are you today???" My friend Ruth replies: "Ohhh well, than' you dear , oohh so hot' outside, 'tis ever gonna stop, my back is hurtin' ..." The coffee lady (smiling and showing her beautifully white teeth): "Sorry to hear that ma'am, I can't stand the heat either. So what can I do for ya today???" (Me: What the .... can we please stop the chit chat, just order the %%#@# coffee and leave??!!) .
The French touch: My first NY deli experience and the Florida moment reminded me of a hilarious book I've recently read (which I highly recommend for those of you wanting a truthful description of the French) written by an Englishman in Paris: A Year in the Merde,* Stephen Clarke. The narrator, a young British guy in Paris goes to a cafe and orders a cafe latte. He asks for a "cafe au lait" but he's being served a huge cup of coffee of what he calls a "combined annual production of Colombia's coffee fields and the dairy herds of Normandy," with, of course, a check proportionate to the humongous size of the drink he got. A rip-off for tourists. A true Parisian would have ordered a "creme." Not a cafe au lait. ---------
* Footnote: For those of you not francophiles, Merde means shit, poop but also is a popular French swear-word (e.g., if you want to sound like a native French, just say Merde in each sentence.)
Labels: Self derision, Simply coffee
Dunkin' Donuts, the Coffee, not the Doughnut...
My sister and I, we grew up with Dunkin' Donuts, not the coffee, but the doughnut, glazed or strawberry filled... It was a pure delight for my childhood palate, until our grandma decided it was too fattening for the 4 year-old Asian kids we were, so grandma switched to Baskin Robbins. She would take us every afternoon after kindergarten class of our childhood years to the local Baskin Robbins (in front of Arisugawa park in Azabu, Tokyo), whether rain or shine, winter or summer... She would order one scoop of orange sherbet... It tasted like a mix between Fanta and Kool-Aid, a beautiful, but yet an amazingly unnatural flashy orange color... we loved it...until we realized that Baskin Robbins ice-cream factory was not limited to orange sherbet.* They had a variety of flavors, much cooler -so to speak- than orange sherbet: e.g., mint ice cream filled with chocolate chips... We saw that kindergarten kid (then our classmate) eating it, or rather swallowing it. My sister and I wanted to give it a try, wanted to ask our grandma that maybe, a change in flavor would not be a bad thing in our monotonous culinary afternoons, but never managing to voice our objection to the daily treat that my grandma was generously offering us. 10 years later, when I had full authority to decide which ice-cream flavor would slide into my greedy throat, I finally tried that most wanted mint ice cream filled with chocolate chips... First reaction? Disappointment. Felt like eating a mint-flavored chewing gum. Since then, I opt for orange sherbet -not that I still crave for Baskin Robbins, which has been truly replaced by a whole pint of "dolce de leche" Haggen Dazs...
All this digression, what was it for...? oh yes, I wanted to talk about Dunkin' Donuts. I didn't know until I moved to NYC that Dunkin' Donuts made coffee. Not a random coffee, but THE coffee, the best coffee I've ever had in my entire short life. Ok ok what would an East Asian (hereafter "EA") know anything about coffee? EAs could talk about tea (green tea, not Ceylon or darjeeeeeling) but not coffee, you would say! EAs don't produce coffee... Anyway anyway, so I discovered Dunkin' Donuts coffee, with milk, no sugar. I was first very skeptical in having a sip of this warm Styrofoam coffee. After a first few sip, I was converted. I had this sudden feeling of warmth, as if I were sleeping in my fluffy bed in a cold winter night or this feeling inside of me when I have "tea and cake" next to the fireplace. Good bye bitter taste Starbucks! The only downside of Dunkin' Donuts, besides the fact that I always want to buy a glazed doughnut with my "large-coffee-with-milk-no-sugar" is that there are comparatively fewer stores in Manhattan. Starbucks are on each block/corner so why not Dunkin' Donuts? Luckily (Thank you God), there were 3 Dunkin' Donuts' stores within walking distance from my downtown apartment. (Check out stores on Fulton/Cliff St, Fulton/Nassau St, and on Broadway/John St. As a matter of comparison, I was surrounded by 10 Starbucks stores within walking distance). The staff was not as nice as the "baristas" and the stores were a bit shabby. However, here is evidence that Dunkin' Donuts are famous for their coffee: go online to Dunkin' Donuts and you'll see that their doughnut skills are not mentioned, they only talk about and sell coffee and all sorts of coffee related accessories. You'd say, "silly, they don't talk about doughnuts on their website because they can't sell doughnuts online! Doughnuts are perishable goods!...." Well... go to Krispykreme, the first image you'll see is a big original glazed with a whole in it...not coffee...
Another digression, I also discovered for the first time Krispy Kreme in NYC (sounds as if I were living secluded in a Monastery and discovered every single delight that life has got to give in NYC, but the answer is NO). At first, I thought Krispy Kreme was much better than Dunkin' Donuts, but I've changed my mind and gone back to my first love, Dunkin' Donuts... Novelty always appears handsome, I guess, until we get bored of it...then we go back to our true values...
-------
* Footnote: Strangely, my sister has always managed to drop her orange sherbet cone in the park. Grandma would buy her another cone but my sister would drop it again... She would cry staring with eyes full of tears at the flashy orangy spot on the ground...
Labels: Memories..., Self derision, Simply coffee
First Post, First Blog, Time Zone
Welcome to my Blog, welcome to my First Blog...
The posted time will show 7:00 AM but in real life, my day is almost -well hopefully- over. I'm at +1 GMT, but my laptop is still on EST (NY Time)...after 6 months back in Europe haven't managed to change the time zone on my laptop yet, okay okay I know this is Paris not New York, (as my friend AMJ loved to say: "This is America not ##&%@# Europe" or as Xristos likes to whine: "awwwe this is Neeew York, not laaaame Paris" under NY Time Zone) on top of it all, with my mom calling me at 3 AM in the middle of the night (+9 GMT my mother's time zone) No wonder I'm becoming schizophrenic. Time for a large coffee with milk, no sugar. Not espresso.Labels: Parisian life, Simply coffee
