Continued from part 1:
Going to Tokyo, I often despise tourists even if I am one myself. When I entered the café I saw that there were no other tourists there. Being the only westerner in the café made me feel very content: “haha I found a place not packed with tourists. Win!”
I was being elitist. I hate when people are elitist. I hate when I think in those lines too.
But I was just too damn happy to be there to care about what I was thinking.
My meta thinking - thinking about thinking - was soon disrupted by a lady behind the counter who must’ve been in her mid 40s. She welcomed me and asked what I wanted.
- “I ‘d love to try your Espresso please!”
- “Sorry, we don’t serve espresso after 2 pm, we only serve milk drinks now.”
I looked at the watch: It was 2.20 pm. I had missed the espresso by at least 20 minutes. Darn. I browsed the list, looking at the different drinks they were serving… And I couldn’t decide what to pick! So I did what I usually do when I’m at a new place: I asked the lady to recommend me something.
She ordered me something called “The Dirty”.
” Hmm. It sounds weird. “
The barista must’ve seen the look on my face, he reassured me:
- “It’s cold milk with layered espresso. It’s good, you should try it”
It was the owner, Katsu - the guys who has taken perfection so far that he believes no one else can make an espresso up to his standards. If he’s not standing at the espresso machine, they don’t serve any coffee at all.
Waiting for my coffe, the lady behind the counter, who I assume was his wife, asked me why I was in Tokyo. I told them I did an internship in advertising. “Oh really!! That’s what Katsu used to do in New York!”
Katsu spoke up: “Ah yes I was working there for 18 years.”
He went on, modestly telling me how he had been in New York for a long time, and how he had achieved quite a lot of success. Despite that, he returned to Tokyo for having VISA problems. And to have something to do meanwhile, he decided to open up his own coffee shop. He kept on going, telling me the details.
Magically, just as the story was finished, my coffee was finished too. Maybe this story was part of the perfection from his part? Maybe he had told this story a thousand times to a thousand curious tourists.
He presented the coffee to me. It was served in a jam jar. It looked charming. And the drink was beautifully layered. The milk had a beige color: The espresso had started to disolve itself into the milk. It looked to me like he had poured cold milk halfway up the jar, poured in an espresso, and carefully filled the other half up and finished off with an espresso on top.
I tasted it. It had a very satisfying taste - he must’ve used high fat milk, and the while drink had a very pleasant coffee taste, something stood out: it really tasted coffee.
I don’t know about you guys, but I have a certain mental image of how coffee should taste. Almost no coffee tastes like that mental image - there’s always other tastes - good and bad - that get in the way - but this coffee drink, it was as close to the taste of pure coffee as it can get. While still being exciting and complex. It was interesting.
After a while Katsu started speaking again:
- “When I first started making this drink, I realized there are different flavours throughout the drink.”
-“At the top, where the crema is, you’ll get a taste of rich chocolate. As you’ll get closer to the middle you’ll notice how the taste switches to a more nutty flavour. At the bottom you get the taste of caramel. “
I looked at my drink and realized I had downed about two thirds, only leaving me with the supposed “nutty part”. I pointed to my jar, laughed a little and said: “I guess it’s too late now for me to notice!”.
- “Come back another day and try again” Katsu said and chuckled.
With the last third left, I carefully sipped it, trying to make the most of it, focusing on finding the nutty taste. I tried to convince myself that I could definately feel something nutty in there. But to be honest I didn’t.
Maybe my taste buds weren’t refined enough.
Perhaps I had been drinking it before the espresso could sink to the bottom properly.
Or maybe it was just a clever sales pitch from a guy who spent almost 20 years in the New York advertising world. I don’t know. But the coffee sure was tasty. And the peeps working there were nice.
Go visit it sometimes. I recommend it. I didn’t get my espresso, but at least I got to try The Dirty.
Katsu & the Dirty
Pic credits goes to counterculturecoffee on flickr.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/counterculturecoffee/5017560416/in/set-72157625016983146/
Oh Michael you made being bad look cool. Teach me, master!
