"The Opposite of Coffee"

OK I’ll admit it – H and I are serious coffee snobs, and Melbourne is to blame with its 5000+ cafes and passion for proper Italian coffee and baristas. I’m not talking about drive-through Starbucks coffees either because, despite what they say, frappuccinos and pumpkin flavored beans aren’t coffee. I’m talking about heavy-bodied, bitter-sweet espressos topped with the perfect reddish-brown mantle of crema. And in the mornings, a heavenly (soy) latte served in a glass on a saucer (refer to picture if you're unfamiliar). In Melbourne, there’s an art to making and serving coffee.

Unfortunately for us, Jacksonville doesn’t possess this flair. Perhaps it’s the lack of Italian culture or maybe the tropical climate…. Who knows? But as H and I have discovered in the last month, there’s some seriously bad coffee here!

Our first coffee was at a small café near Riverside. The espresso cup came out with around 30 ml of dark brown liquid. The portion was correct as was the cup. But there was no crema and no rich flavor. Instead we were served a mini cup of hazelnut flavored, Hawaiian drip coffee. Oh dear.

The following week, we broke down and reluctantly entered the Starbucks lair for a latte. I mistakenly thought that they could handle an ordinary soy latte. WTF!!! I thought as this sickeningly sweet shit sprayed out of my mouth. Did I order some bastardized version of chai? No. Apparently when you order a soy latte here, it’s made with vanilla flavored “soy product” packed with a gazillion calories and enough sugar to make your teeth ache. Natural soy milk is delicious – nutty and subtle. Yes it’s an acquired taste, but it’s a taste you’ll never acquire if you drink this syrupy shit! I won’t even go into the portion sizes….

That day H and I bought our own coffee grinder and a pound of over-roasted, fair-trade organic beans from Native Sun. At least our homemade drip coffee is a bit better than mediocre. Here’s hoping it will taste better when our Bodum arrives.

Folio Weekly (the independent street mag) just came out with its Best of Jax issue. Best Coffee went to Shelby’s Coffee Shoppe in Neptune Beach. Off we go to the beach! H scurried to the counter and breathlessly ordered 2 regular lattes with a double shot of espresso. The fact that it’s a “shoppe” rather than a shop or café should have raised alarm bells. Anyway, out came our flavorless lattes in large paper cups (we didn’t order takeaway btw) with this weird head of light over-aerated foam that gave the appearance of a milkshake rather than a coffee. H wept.

Here’s a good time to stop with our coffee adventures and give a quick café latte lesson. Of course a good shot of espresso is the foundation of a latte, but it’s also how the barista handles the steamed milk. The aim in steaming the milk is to aerate it and give it the consistency of whipped cream without burning it. The combination of frothed and steamed milk is then poured and gently ladled onto the espresso in the cup, as if folding it in. One must also be careful in getting the temperature of the milk right. The best milk temperature is between 60 C and 70 C because it gives the best flavor to the coffee and doesn’t scald your tongue (80C is the temp at which milk boils.)

Lesson over. So when all hope was lost, H decided to try one more place around the corner from our apartment called the Bad Ass Coffee Company. To our relief/surprise, we actually got decent coffees. Their espressos are better than the lattes – mainly because the lattes were served a bit too hot and were too "milky". However compared to our previous outings, we definitely have a winner. The beans are all Hawaiian, and the staff couldn’t be nicer. Now if only I can get them to make an unsweetened soy latte….. I’ll work on that!