Why I’ve missed coffee shops …

May 22, 2020
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I once asked CJ Curtis her secret to repeat customers at The Garden, her Spokane Valley coffee shop that has soared in its first year in business.

The customer service?

The Indaba coffee?

The avocado toast?

“Personally, I think it is the presence of God; I really do,” she said. “I believe that people can sense his presence even if they don’t know it.”

My first thought: Writing about toast would be easier.

My thoughts ever since: Amen.

• • •

Ironically, coffee shops used to be my escape from anyone’s presence.

Counter seat facing the street.

Earbuds in.

Alerts silenced.

My mission was to move piles of work and avoid eye contact. God, the devil and the mayor could have been there for all I cared. My back was turned.

But if Swiss psychiatrist Carl Jung had been sipping a cappuccino in the corner, he would have sworn he saw the devil slip onto the stool at my side.

“Hurry is not of the devil; hurry is the devil,” Jung famously said.

I was always in a hurry.

And it was those things that hurried me that presented the key problem. Charles Hummel published a booklet in the 1960s called “Tyranny of the Urgent,” arguing that the most important things in life are often crowded out by things far less vital. How? Because the trivial items were due yesterday.

To say coffee shops rescued me from this tyrant is oversimplifying things.

But they provided the setting.

• • •

One of the less spectacular ways a marriage deteriorates is a combination of hurry and ego. In my case, I spent years too busy to properly prioritize my wife and too proud to tell myself the truth about it.

For Kim and me, renewal began at shops like Rockwood Bakery and the Service Station (miss that place). Then we started taking weekly coffee dates at Thomas Hammer and Jack and the Bean Shop, at Vessel and Vault, at Arctos and Coeur d’Alene Coffee Company.

The coffee itself was incredible, but it didn’t contain any magic for rejuvenating our relationship. Drinking it slowly, on the other hand …

We invested time seeing and being seen, hearing and being heard, knowing and being known. I started to realize that when I wasn’t in a hurry, I was quite taken by the woman across from me.

Over time, I introduced other relationships to the coffee shop treatment.

One of my best friends, Adam, was an acquaintance until the night we hit up the downtown Starbucks instead of coming straight home from an event.

Three hours in the patio sun at Bakery by the Lake with my mom deepened our bond more than our prior 300 “interactions in passing.”

Do you remember how hard it is to be a teenager? I don’t, but it helped when my daughter and I started talking about song lyrics, school stress and mental health at Sams and Coffee on late-start school days. I’m a bumbling parent, but I’ve never regretted those blended mochas at 7 a.m.

• • •

Here in Spokane County, COVID closed down inside seating at coffee shops March 17. That ban was lifted — with several proper restrictions in place — on May 22, a span of 66 days. (There’s a devil-in-the-details fact for you.)

Some have cited the forced “slowing down” of life’s pace as a silver lining of the coronavirus. As a susceptible slave to hurry, I’m not arguing.

But “slowdown” was only a piece of my revival story, and this is why I’ve missed coffee shops so much. I didn’t just need to be present. I needed to be purposeful and vulnerable in my relationships as well.

Jamie Tworkowski, the writer and mental health advocate, says it best: “You’ll need coffee shops and sunsets and road trips. Airplanes and passports and new songs and old songs, but people more than anything else. You will need other people, and you will need to be that other person to someone else, a living, breathing, screaming invitation to believe better things.”

There was a time I wasn’t believing better things. Even in coffee shops, I couldn’t see beyond my to do list and my ticking clock.

But that was before I turned around.

Before I sat down across from a fellow human being.

Before I sensed it: CJ Curtis was right.

Would you do me a favor?

If you enjoy articles like this one, join the CoffeeJosh mailing list. It’s hurry-free, spam-free and also free … free. As a thanks, I’ll send you a PDF — you guessed it, free — that has 10 of the best coffee shop orders in the Spokane area. (All 10 are drinks and treats local coffee shop owners make for themselves. In this case, expect to pay for your order and feel like it was totally worth it.)

Related Posts

‘You are what you say you are …’

October 9, 2019
3

One of my all-time favorite gifts was a few simple words placed in a frame. Pictured below, it’s a reminder my wife had custom-designed for me by our friend, Brittany White. This is the story behind it …

I was Skyping with a pastor in Uganda who has become a dear friend. Ronald’s church was preparing to take a pair of special offerings. One was for an 11-year-old girl whose leg was being eaten from the inside by a parasite and would need to be amputated if funds could not be raised for medical treatment. The other was for a region a couple hours south of his church that was especially hard hit by this year’s dry season. He was asking his people to give money, food — whatever they could.

  • Visiting Ronald’s church in Uganda

“People are literally starving,” the pastor told me. “What is very sad is that the government is not coming in to help. But we have a responsibility as Christians to come in and help.”

“I’m sorry, I’ve got to stop you right there,” I said. “You’ve told me a good offering at your church is $20. The vast majority of your congregation is unemployed. Why would your church help? Don’t you have enough needs of your own?”

Pastor Ronald laughed.

  • View overlooking Fort Portal, Uganda.

“In America, you have an expression that doesn’t make sense to us in Uganda: ‘You are what you eat.’ If that was true, we would all be matooke — a field of matooke. But we have a similar expression in Rutooro: ‘Oli eki ekyokugamba oli.’ It means, ‘You are what you say you are.’

“When I have visited America, I have been amazed at all the generous people. But there are also some people who always think they need more. My goodness, there are children who are complaining they have six pairs of shoes, and they want daddy to buy them another pair. I have some children whose Sunday best is barefoot, and they are walking 5 to 10 miles to church barefoot in the rain. Sometimes on empty stomachs.

“If you are materially wealthy, if you have six pairs of shoes, but deep inside yourself you still think of yourself as poor, it is very hard to give. You never go beyond what you think you are.

“But it is possible to be rich from the inside, even if you do not have much. Even if you don’t have shoes. The Bible talks about being faithful with much — or with little. We are accountable to be faithful with what we have.

“There are people who materially they are rich, but they are poorer than anyone you can think of, because they think it is all about me. Being rich comes from the heart, not from the outside. When you view your wealth as coming from the outside, you begin to see you are not rich enough. You find a hurting person and don’t even help. You think of yourself instead, because you say, ‘I do not have enough.’

“‘Oli eki ekyokugamba oli.’ You are what you say you are.”

Being rich comes from the heart, not from the outside.

Pastor Ronald, Uganda

Whenever I visit and hear him speak, I like the way Pastor Ronald talks about Jesus, whose humble birth similarly turned the definition of riches on its head. He told the rich young ruler to give everything away, lectured on greatness by washing dirty feet and built a Kingdom not with palaces and power but with grace and truth and love.

In short, he knew we needed help with that ultimate definition we all grapple with: our identity, our “oli eki ekyokugamba oli.” Oh, to be rich from the inside.

While you’re here, would you do me a favor?

If you enjoy articles like this one, join the CoffeeJosh mailing list. It’s hurry-free, spam-free and also free … free. As a thanks, I’ll send you a PDF — you guessed it, free — that has 10 of the best coffee shop orders in the Spokane area. (All 10 are drinks and treats local coffee shop owners make for themselves. In this case, expect to pay for your order and feel like it was totally worth it.)

What’s the difference: cappuccino, latte, mocha, americano?

November 13, 2020
2

Touring four staples of the American espresso menu

<Coffee for the Average Josh, Part 7 of 10>

What’s the right way to make a cappuccino? What is the proper ratio of espresso to milk to foam? Should it include a dusting of cinnamon or chocolate powder? Is a proper cappuccino wet or dry?

Cue Magic 8 Ball: “Reply hazy.”

You may as well ask me the right way to make a chocolate chip cookie. (It’s my wife’s recipe, and my youngest daughter nearly has it mastered, too.)

But while the “right” way is open to interpretation, a basic definition can help when touring four pillars of most American espresso menus: the cappuccino, latte, mocha and americano.

Cappuccino

What is it

Espresso topped by steamed milk topped by a thick layer of milk foam.

Trivia trio

  1. Monk business: Cappuccino takes its name from the Capuchin friars of Italy. When the drink was introduced in Italy, people thought the color of the espresso mixed with frothed milk looked similar to the color of a Capuchin robe. Note these same monks were so famous for their color scheme, when a species of similarly shaded primates were discovered in Central America they were dubbed “capuchin monkeys.”
  2. Wet vs. dry: The baseline for a traditional cappuccino is usually understood to include the milk and foam in equal quantities. Want more foam and less milk in the middle? Order your cappuccino dry. Want less foam and more milk? Order it wet, though some will argue you are elbowing into latte territory at this point.
  3. Sweet venti lies: A traditional cappuccino is known for a strong espresso flavor and for reasonably equal parts of milk and foam. Because of this, a cappuccino traditionalist will tell you that the idea of a 20-ounce cappuccino (or really anything much more than 8 ounces), is laughable. Why? The larger the drink, the more milk required, which dilutes the strength of the taste and makes achieving even ratios impossible. (Making the “microfoam” in large quantities is either a) impossible or b) requires ridiculous amounts of milk, depending on who you ask.)

Latte

What is it

Espresso topped by a generous amount of steamed milk topped by a thin layer of milk foam.

Trivia trio

  1. Gateway drug: Lattes are famously creamy. Indeed, espresso is such an intense coffee experience that when it first migrated out of Italy, foreigners found it bitter so they sweetened it with generous ratios of hot milk. The latte was born, and we are still experimenting with the right ratios of espresso dilution to this day. For many, this not only includes milk but a litany of syrups.
  2. Don’t order in Italy: When in Rome, be sure to order a “caffe latte.” Make the mistake of ordering just a latte, and the waiter will bring you a glass of milk. (“Latte” means milk in Italian. In a pinch, though, I think “Oreo” still means Oreo.)
  3. Not black and (flat) white: Want to add a layer of interpretation to the difference between a cappuccino and a latte? Done. The extra layer is called a flat white. The anecdotal origins of the flat white go back to Australians and Kiwis feeling ripped off by all the foam they were being served on their cappuccinos. Instead of a cup filled with “air,” they wanted it filled to the top with the foam chopped off — a flat, white coffee of espresso and milk. Thus, the flat white sounds very much like an Australian latte. Perhaps, but if you need to differentiate, here are two ways: 1) the foam on top may be even flatter in a flat white; 2) the drink typically features a stronger coffee flavor than a latte, gained by using a higher ratio of espresso to milk and/or ristretto shots.  

Mocha

What is it

Espresso topped by steamed milk, milk foam, and chocolate (ooh, and maybe whipped cream!)

Trivia trio

  1. Cuckoo for cocoa: A mocha is a latte with chocolate, but from here the recipe diverts a million ways: varieties of chocolate from white to dark, forms of chocolate from syrup to powder, quantities of chocolate from chunks to dusting.
  2. Mocha vs. Mokha vs. Moka vs. Moca vs. Mocca: The word “mocha” first got mixed up with coffee not thanks to chocolate, but thanks to a port in Yemen. A Yemeni bean exported out of the Port of Mokha came to be referred to as mocha coffee. This coffee became so popular that many people took to calling coffee “mocha” the way some people call it joe. But the confusion was just getting started. In the 1930s, an Italian inventor came up with a new pot for brewing coffee and called it Moka (after this same port, by all indications). So it naturally follows that today, most American consumers only know the word mocha as referring to chocolatey coffee. Say what?
  3. So … about the chocolate: OK, so there are a couple possibilities as to how mocha became associated with chocolate. The first is that the Yemeni mocha bean wasn’t as fruity or floral as coffee from other regions and was more likely described as earthy — even “chocolatey.” At least that makes some sense. Another school of thought is that someone — probably an American — randomly put chocolate coffee on a menu as “mocha” one day and the muddled marketing just stuck. Either way, the word is far more rooted in an ancient Yemeni port than it is in chocolate.

Americano

What is it

Espresso mixed with hot water

Trivia trio

  1. It’s that dilution thing again: Like milk’s role in a latte, water serves as the americano’s star in taking the edge off the strong espresso taste. As such, the ratio of water to espresso can vary widely depending on the desired result.
  2. The ‘long black’ difference: A common way to make an Americano is to brew espresso and “just add water.” Some prefer the opposite approach, however: start with water and brew or pour the espresso on top. This drink is referred to as a long black, and its difference chiefly lies in the crema produced by the espresso. When poured last, it is less disturbed or mixed into the drink. Some people prefer this, while others find the crema, while pleasing to look at, adds unnecessary bitterness to the drink and should be removed.   
  3. Made in America? There’s no doubt the name “americano” is a direct connection to America (the word is Italian for “American”). The most popular origin story may be apocryphal, but it’s become widespread: American GIs sent to Italy during and following World War II found the espresso to be too strong. They longed for coffee that tasted more like what they were used to back home, so they added water. Presto, americano!

Next week: “How much should I tip? (And other coffeeshop etiquette)”

This is the seventh in a 10-part series, “Coffee for the Average Josh,” releasing Fridays this fall. Get your fix of Coffee 101 by signing up to receive an email when the next post drops.

Previous:

  1. Where do coffee babies come from? (Oct. 2, 2020)
  2. Growing up on the coffee farm (Oct. 9, 2020)
  3. 3 reasons to pay more for your coffee (Oct. 16, 2020)
  4. 5 factors of great-tasting coffee (Oct. 23, 2020)
  5. How do you take your coffee? (Oct. 30, 2020)
  6. What is espresso? (Nov. 6, 2020)

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