I avoided drinking coffee for a long time. I drank caffeine, but usually in the form of soda. I wasn’t worried about coffee making me jittery or the taste or anything like that. I was mostly put off by the excessive number of options. So many times I would be in a coffee shop and look up at the menu. I was confronted by big scary words like cappuccino, latte, espresso (which I pronounced as “expresso” for years), café au lait, mocha, dark roast, light roast. I’d see this and just think, “Fuck it, I can’t be bothered with this nonsense.”
I think part of my frustration was due to my lacking coffee vocabulary. Through research, I have discovered a latte is just coffee and steamed milk, whatever steamed milk is. A mocha is coffee flavored chocolate milk. I thought espresso was just extra caffeinated coffee but, apparently, that’s a misconception. Dark roast and light roast continue to puzzle me but the good news is you can ignore all of this. You can honestly walk up and order a plain coffee and they’ll just give it to you. Easy as that!
The question that still remains is why is it so complicated. The anti-climatic answer is I have no idea. Maybe people feel fancy to drink something really pretty with an unusual name. Maybe some people are just really particular about what they drink. Nothing against them. It’s just not for me.
Your editor in ordering a regular damn coffee,
Will Cohan