All the time.I've been served an awful lot of bad coffee the past few years - at high end to low end joints, doesn't much matter, but I
do find myself disappointed more by the high end places that charge me $4 or $5 per cup - not an espresso drink mind you, a simple cup
of coffee.
I am pretty sure that the notion of what constitutes good coffee is subjective, so I'll say that it's any coffee that's not too weak or too strong by most standards and coffee that doesn't have any strange or bad tasting notes that stand out....you know too bitter, too metallic, too acidic, too sour, too stale, anything along those lines.
I'm on a trip right now and I've stopped for a couple days at a popular casino resort. This morning I woke quite early to take a walk
and decided to head over to the cafe for my first cup of the day. A casino attendant let me know that the cafe hadn't opened yet
but he suggested I walk over to the coffee station on the gambling floor where there's free coffee.
My expectations for free casino coffee were very low.
I prepared myself a cup, took a sip and WOW - it was delicious.....rich flavor, no unpleasant notes, pleasantly strong but not too strong and chock full of notes of caramel and nuts.
I skipped the cafe.
I went back to the gambling floor for a second cup later in the day.
Have you ever been pleasantly surprised by coffee you found outside of home? any sleeper hits? this is a first for me here.
Australians pioneered "3rd stage coffee".
Second stage was Starbucks - which is terrible. Really their coffee - I don't know what is wrong with it, but I've never had a cup I enjoyed at Starbucks. (Canadians have the delight of "coffee" from Tim Horton's. Well it is black and bitter, at least.. goes well with donuts).
Australia, particularly Melbourne, had a "coffee culture" arising from Italian and Greek immigrants post-war. Somewhere in the last 30 years that became the "3rd stage" of coffeehouses.
That has now spread to London and other UK cities. In a sense virgin territory because tea was the main drink, there wasn't a tradition of good coffee. And to some extent Scandinavia I think. Probably the massive tightening down on drink-driving (ie alcohol DUI) has had an effect - people meet in the coffee house and not the pub. Of course WiFi also has a role, but the really popular places ban WiFi (or laptops) in busy hours.
The French (North African) place on my High Street has great coffee. So does the Italian place. And the "3rd stage" place.
Statistics: Posted by Valuethinker — Tue Dec 09, 2025 3:17 am — Replies 9 — Views 833