Coffee cravings

waaaaaaaa. i want to fly back to india and have coffee.

i had coffee at several different occasions in kolkata -- restaurant, wedding, relatives' houses, guesthouse -- and each cup was as fabulous as the rest. there's something with the way indians make coffee, or maybe something about the beans, that has reduced everything else i've ever tasted to overpriced industrial sludge. to this day i simply can't bring myself to buy a hot coffee from starbucks or seattle's best.

cup one: wedding joe

the creamy cuppa pictured above was one of several that i had at one of the ceremonies before shivaani's (marlon's closest friend from p&g) wedding.

it was love at first sip -- imagine coffee crumble ice cream from arce dairy (my utter, utter favorite) melted, heated, poured into a cup, and topped with froth. gggggzzzzzzzzzzz.

fortunately, at the wedding ceremony proper. which lasted from about 6pm well until 2am, there was more of the same. utter, free-flowing bliss.

you know those wedding guests who take advantage of the free drinks to booze themselves into oblivion? that was me, except i was od'ing on all that java. see caffeine-glazed expression on right.

cup two: kape de muchacho

i spent the second half of my kolkata stay at a guesthouse booked by shivaani's family for foreign wedding guests. marlon, ge (another p&g friend) and i were attended to most meticulously by no less than six manservants. i remember coming into the house for the first time and being dumbfounded by a flurry of manservants. (me to marlon: "aba! at bakit napakarami nating mga muchacho?")

our muchachos (or mokongs), as we came to call them, were extremely adept at cross-cultural communication, were fabulous in the kitchen (i'm getting hungry just thinking about their breakfast omelet with chilies), played bouncy indian music all over the house, and made divine coffee and tea.

by the time we left, we were harboring evil plans to kidnap one of the muchachos and set up a cafe or restaurant here. but dagnabbit, even the youngest one was too big to force into a suitcase.

sigh. i want muchacho coffee.

afterthought: why, for a country that supposedly grows such great coffee beans, do we have such crappy coffee?