This afternoon I was feeling a touch of cabin fever and so, for lunch, I drove over to the Fourth Street Bakery in LaSalle for a cinnamon-sugar bagel and some hot chocolate. The bagel was divine - sweet, chewy, not too heavy. It was perfect and I haven't had anything that good since the days of Bagelby's in Pocatello. (Over ten years ago now.)
The hot chocolate, on the other hand, is a mystery. I don't know how it tasted because just the heat vapor rising out of the pencil-eraser-sized hole in the lid singed my taste bus right off. I looked through the little hole in the lid and, just before my retinas were scalded right out of my head, this is what I saw:
Bad, right? It's not good when the fiery cauldron of Hell appears in something you bought to drink, y'know?
So anyway, I carried the thing around for forty five minutes, blowing on it, whimpering quietly over my burned tongue and retinas, waiting for it to become cool enough for someone not made out of cast iron to drink it. Finally, after close to an hour, it was a reasonable temperature but by then, I was so thirsty and irritated that I just gulped it down. There was no savoring, no enjoying. Just the perfunctory act of getting it over with. Sigh.
So what's the deal? Why do things have to be heated until it's as though they've been scooped from the biggest lake on the Sun? Is it some kind of messed up way of making people think they're getting something extra special for their four dollar coffee? "Well, it tasted just like every other cup of coffee I've ever had, but man, was it hot!" I don't know. If anyone has a theory, please enlighten me.
P.S. I guess I should have been tipped off when I saw that the barista looked like this:
6 comments:
As a former barista, I feel that I can shed a bit of light on this. The goal is to make the drink hotter than cooler, because it can always cool down if it's too hot, but the customer can't heat it up in any kind of sane or reasonable way if it's served too cool.
The problem becomes that some baristas take this too far and serve you molten lava instead of hot coffee/chocolate.
Another thing to consider is that the fine folks that work as baristas are extremely used to drining scalding beverages, where you seem to be drinking them few and far between. Just a difference of habits and cultures.
If you ever return to this place, tell them that the last time you ordered it was scalding hot, and ask them to take it down a notch. Also make sure the person who takes your order sees you put a (decent to good) tip in the can and they'll be more inclined to take care of you.
Just the fact that you took the time to find and post the flame elements cracks me up. Sorry you didn't enjoy your cup 'a co-co.
I'm laughing because I, unfortunately, do that to my children and Jeff says that when I serve soup it's always scorchin' HOT!
I just want to thank you, Mark, for continuing to post the "Weather in Detroit" each time I read your blog post. If you have any way to any way to make that look sunny with low 70's, I'd appreciate it !
If you pour it out of the styrofoam cup into another container it'll cool down faster. You probably didn't have another one... put some regular paper cups somewhere. Hope your tongue and nostrils have healed!
You should have returned it, or reminded them that someone sued McDonald's for their scalding-hot coffee.
Oh, and the -ino in Italian indicates a diminiuitive. Nasino=little nose (naso). But Nasone=big nose!
Though I looked through my dizionario Italiano and found no root word for cappuccino (one would think there would be a verb like cappucciare, but no!) so I don't know why they end all those drinks with -inos. The other definition for cappuccino, besides "white coffee," was "Capuchin monk/friar."
I think we could ask the same question to Taco Bell regarding how they come up with nonsense names for their "food," like the Gordita.
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