Better Never Than Latte

I was sitting at the counter of a local dining establishment waiting for my order. I had relinquished the menu, and having forgotten a newspaper I was at a loss for reading material, until I noticed some instructions taped to a refrigerator door. It was a list of how to make various beverages, and it started:

“Latte: 23 ounces of a full new gallon of milk and 20 ounces of latte mix”

It’s an established convention in the food industry that a place that makes a decent cheeseburger is probably not going to excel in the exotic coffee department. And the cheeseburger (with fries) was why I was there: it was a chilly rainy day and I needed some comfort food. I guess I always knew that there was some kind of short cut to making coffee beverages, but I never realized how short a cut it might be.

Having never made a latte myself, I wasn’t totally sure what was involved, so I called my friend Jeff Petrovitch, a noted barista from Keene, and he explained the process. It begins with espresso – a “well pulled” espresso. The beans should be freshly ground to just the right consistency, and tamped down (he recommends about 40 lbs of pressure) evenly. Then milk is steamed to between 130 – 140 degrees, and poured gently (he does his down the side of the cup) so that it does not break the “crema” the slightly foamy surface that has a somewhat oily finish. Finally, just a small topping of foamed milk that sets over the crema. This is an abbreviated summary – it took Jeff five minutes to describe every little detail, and he noted how shortcuts at any step of the way would reduce the quality of the beverage.

I enjoyed my cheeseburger, paid the bill, and went back to work, but I couldn’t get this latte thing out of my head.
My first experiences of coffee were from my grandmothers percolator, and at various diners on Cape Cod, where I spent summers working for my grandfather on his cranberry bogs. The only variation that one sometimes heard about was Sanka. Some years later I had occasion to visit Seattle where coffee was just beginning to come out of the closet, as it were. What a revelation! It’s a mixed blessing to discover such things, since one’s standards tend to become more demanding, and not always met.

These days yearnings for excellent coffee are usually satisfied by beans from Prime Roast in Keene. The coffee on the premises is the best, since it is the freshest, but having the beans at home works fine too. But to illustrate that I am not a total coffee snob, I must confess that recently I have been having strange cravings for Dunkin’ Donuts coffee (not, however, their “lattes”, since I suspect they use a similar formula to that mentioned above) . Having been enlightened about really good coffee, and furthermore, having easy access to the same, how to explain my recent yearning for the coffee that “America Runs On”? After some soul searching, I ascribe it to a desire for a simpler experience. Coffee is a very primal beverage, but it can be quite complex. There are days when the palette just does not want to have to think so hard.

A similar situation occurs with music. I was recently listening to Elizabeth Cotten singing “Freight Train”. This song, which she wrote at the age of twelve, is the quintessential American folk song. Her rendition is less “refined” than the version later popularized by Peter, Paul and Mary, but it comes through more directly. A similar observation could be made about the blues of Robert Johnson, which took Eric Clapton’s dramatic interpretation to give it appeal to broader audiences. There are hundreds of other examples. Folk music today tends to be fairly polished, in part because the bar has been raised. Your average performer has heard a lot of different kinds of music, is probably not rigid about a specific genre, and has developed technical skills (not to mention what can be done in the recording studio) that “upscale” what has been done in the past.  Intonation and a balanced mix are more attended to. Audiences have gotten used to this, and expect it. Nevertheless, it can sometimes be refreshing and enriching to hear things more simply rendered.

When I first heard “Freight Train” it was the Peter, Paul and Mary version. It was in the early 1960’s, and the song was being sung in coffee houses in New York and many other cities. This particular use of coffee-serving venues had evolved in the beat era of the previous decade, notably in Greenwich Village (which of course is where PP&M got their start, along with Bob Dylan and bunches of other folk icons).

It was at this time that coffee houses (not to be confused with coffee shops) became associated with folk culture, and to some degree, counter culture (not to be confused with coffee counter culture). Churches began to hold “coffee houses” to present musicians and poets, often as a means of giving voice to social concerns.

The history of the coffee house as an institution goes back to the 15th century. Apparently there was something about the beverage that was conducive to doing business, or perhaps the “deals” made in coffeehouses just proved more sound than those made in pubs; in any case the coffeehouse soon became a hub for all sorts of business ventures and transactions throughout the Middle East and  Europe, and eventually the New World. The New York Stock Exchange was incubated in the Tontine Coffee House.

The current mode of coffee houses have often have something of a Bohemian counter-culture element. The aforementioned Prime Roast provides an alt/cozy venue for folks who are looking to parse a little philosophy, or simply sit in solitude contemplating the great whatever. Even Starbucks, which exploited the concept of designer coffee and made it more or less “establishment”  manages to keep an alternative edge – blending, as it were, the music/social responsibility theme with a capitalist slant.

As you can see, with an adequate coffee infusion, it’s very easy to go off on all sorts of tangents, but let us return to the original discussion: latte mixes. This is a very good example of how when something becomes popular enough, it gets transformed into something that has the trappings, but not the content, of the real thing. We see the same thing with bagels (you can get a donut-shaped roll just about anywhere these days, but to get a bagel you still have to go to New York). We see it in entertainment (Britney Spears is surely the artistic equivalent of latte mix).  The list goes on – relationships, politics, and of course, economics. It’s an interesting question – when do we cross the line from variety (range of substance) to imitation?