European cafes versus American

American cafes, restaurants, as in most of them and apart specialty coffee houses otherwise for conscientious people in the know -- pretty much standard fare for watered-down nondescript stale coffee. Even my own "brewed coffee", though better for beans I've roasted, isn't especially noteworthy apart general comparisons. Comparatively, I don't really think much about the taste of coffee I buy out in establishments -- between varying a lot over a field I wouldn't think worth mention. I'll drink anything beyond the lower limit of my cutoff point, which occurs at really rancid, burnt coffee that tastes as bad as an engine transmission smells.

Drinking coffee for taste doesn't usually occur until made in my kitchen with the espresso machine on the countertop.

-- In Seattle you haven't had enough coffee until you can thread a sewing machine while it's running. -Jeff Bezos

We have waaay different attitudes toward drinking coffee. Drinking coffee for taste is the *only* reason that i drink coffee - even if it means bringing my own home roast into work each day (and it does). I don't order coffee in restaurants because I'm pretty much guaranteed to leave it barely touched because I find it unacceptable. YMMV.

Tony V.

Noooo -- we don't. I didn't say how much I drink -- a cup may seem unacceptable to you, although comparatively, to me anyway, it puts my level of unacceptability closer to you, than, say, drinking the whole pot, which I've been known to do some distant ages long ago.

Besides, who's to say it's a restaurant. What if I'm hanging out in a transmission shop? I'm not too proud to deny I had a half a cup at a dealership the other day, after stopping by late morning to ream out their title/prep guy. One of those nasty Mr. Coffee things obsequious to transacting obscure corners placed in most businesses, even if I wasn't complaining in particular about its horrid taste.

At a restaurant, though to be fairer, I may have half-a-cup refill more, or even two cups. Besides, somebody has to help defray runaway commodity and energy prices to operate an establishment these days. Certainly isn't the cute gals serving bubbling outgoing friendliness to me -- certainly not at a quarter or less change gratuity above a couple bucks I leave for the price of a coffee.

You know what's the really sad part about all this, the shame. . .what I were ask one of them home, say she drinks coffee, and offer her an espresso once we're comfortably seated on the white leather couch before a glass-top coffee table. I've got to think twice and be very careful about doing that, as there's some likelihood she'll never have had a cup prepared Italian style. The reaction may be one unfounded aversion to sheer strangeness and false, though a common presumption espresso is entirely too strong and extraordinarily "loaded up" with caffeine.

-- They don't get that way for nothing. -Anon.

I'll never order espresso from a restaurant, but that's because I know how it can look inside a restaurant maintained machine, "with their annual check-ups".

I tried my first restaurant shot a few weeks ago. Noticing a colored chalkboard describing variously sweetened concoctions loosely grouped for espresso, and beneath, the back of what I suspect may have been a commercial machine, being what actually caught my eye. Enough to have a closer look, briefly of what I could, around the counter at the front, when the proprietor approached -- 'Sure,' I said, 'except I'd like a straight espresso'. She actually apologized, a brief nondescript mention, before putting in perhaps an Illy POD and extracting a watery stream of foam. Being with visitor from CA, a young soldier who had followed me over for the game -- confessing to me a general like of coffee, presumably I took that to mean brewed, though he requested the same -- I thought best in turn apologize to him, that it 'oughn't be in any sense a lasting impression for espresso.'