Saturday, August 28, 2004


birdies

to my mind, a double eagle is the large brass critter on top of the old victoria arduino at the caffé reggio. so perhaps it was strange that yesterday evening i was met after yoga by a golf connoisseur.

yes, it's true, apparently there's a new magazine called golf connoisseur, and they sent one manny howard to do a coffee lifestyle story. but of course i can't make coffee for people without ultra-fresh beans, so i called up oren's famed genevieve to met me there as well.

this is how myself, a french babe, and the golf connoisseur came to be playing with freshly roasted harrar horse and a vac pot. we were in desperate search for that elusive blueberry feeling. . . and we couldn't really find much of it.

at first i thought the coffee was roasted too darkly. but genevieve thought it was perhaps too finely ground, and thus overextracted.

poor manny was freaking out with too much information, as we talked about the famed "lingle coffee constant," cupping, and the nez du café.

then of course the real secret came out -- manny and his editor want me to throw a cupping at the exchange just as i did last june for the scaa consumer membership.

further, the editor asked that "a ringer" be thrown in. what does that mean, i asked? some really bad coffee, he replied, to trip up the tasters.

this nearly threw me for a loop. did he think a cupping was some kind of coke and pepsi challenge?

that people like former scaa prez steve colten and don schoenholt of gillies -- people who've been cupping coffee for 30 years -- are really going to mistake that folgers for an estate antigua? that genevieve is just a nice girl with a pretty face?

he really thought i was going to help him set up a situation to humiliate people i basically regard as father figures? i was so angry i nearly spit.

but then i thought: no. i'll show them. when i come back from italy, this whole thing is going down.

and the editor at golf connoisseur had better bring an omelet pan so he can do something useful with the egg that will surely decorate his face. . . .

because dear readers, even i myself, a famous loser, can tell folgers in a blind cupping. how?

the folgers will be the one you really, really, wanna spit as fast as humanly possible. . .the fine coffees are the ones you wish you didn't have to. . .

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