Faire Gallery Cafe for Coffee, Art and More…
I checked out Faire [Gallery] Cafe when it first opened. This was quite a while back and quite honestly I didn’t quite remember what the latte experience was like and I knew that if I was going to add a post about the place, I would have to go back and try another latte… And so I did just that a couple of days ago..
Before I get into the details, I must say that many a time, especially in the evenings after work or at night, I have driven by the place on my way home and seen the place completely packed! Not just people sitting down to coffee and treats, but people listening to live music, poetry readings or other performances. The remarkable thing about this is that Faire Gallery Café is actually a relatively small place. What helps though is there is upstairs seating although the upstairs does not span the whole floor space, rather it semi-circles three sides of the wall. What I mean by that is the people sitting upstairs can look below and see everything going on, on the main floor.
Jessica, the owner of the place seems to have some sort of French connection or affinity and even the name of the place, Faire is a french verb meaning “to make.” On their MySpace page, she indicates that her hometown is Paris. That I thought was rather interesting was that they don’t serve French coffee, rather, they serve Italian coffee i.e. Caffe Umbria but then I was pretty happy with that since Caffe Umbira is one of my favorite coffee roasting companies.
So that is what I ordered… a double tall latte. Now to be honest once again, I really did not like my latte as I would have thought I would considering it was Caffe Umbria. That I found out though was that Faire uses the Arco Etrusco blend which is a dark roast. I can’t quite tell if it was the dark roast itself or whether it was simply the barista who made a latte what wasn’t really memorable to me. I do know one thing for sure, if that is typical of their lattes, I’d rather walk a further one block south to Bauhaus Books and Coffee where I know I will get a great latte…
One thing I have to say about Faire is that I have heard great things about their service and their food, especially their salads. I thought the barista was really nice to me and she even had no objection with me taking pictures in the place… as long as she was not in the picture… I would certainly frequent the place for try out their other eats and enjoy the arts… just not for the coffee though.
Before I end this post, here’s a little trivia for you coffee and/or Italian lovers… the Arco Etruscio is the name of the famous arched entry to the Umbrian town of Perugia and is also the official logo for Caffe Umbria.
Herkimer Coffee… Much Ado About Nothing…
Today I dropped by the Herkimer Coffee shop, the one located in South Ravenna, on University Way NE. I was in the area running an errand and I saw the sign for the shop… and since I was parking right by the shop, I thought this would also be a good opportunity to try out the coffee there and also find out a little about Herkimer Coffee and their selection of beans.
The barista on duty was a rather interesting character. When I asked her questions about the coffee beans and the blend, all she could tell me was that Herkimer Coffee roasts their own beans. The roasting plant is in Phinney Ridge, which is also their other retail location. But she doesn’t know much about the blends because the owner doesn’t give out any details. I thought is was interesting that their espresso blend does not have a name at all… it’s simply known as the espresso blend…
I then asked her if I she minded if I could take a picture in the store. She was rather apprehensive about that and offered to ask her manager if I could. She wanted “to be on the safe side” and suggested that I can come back at another time and she’ll let me know what the manager said. I did not have the heart to tell her that unless the coffee was great, I probably would not come back to this store just to simply take a picture of the store inside. But on the flip side, she did give me an extra cup… so at least I can add a picture of that to my collection of coffee cups…
So she made me my latte and on the surface, I liked the fact that the foam was a nice darker shade of brown and a cool little rosetta design… looks cool. I added my usual sugar in the raw and tasted. Now here is where I am conflicted. I liked the fact that the latte had that soft taste to it but overall, the latte was rather mild. Now I like a nice strong latte… not so big into the dark roasts but prefer the medium roast which I believe this must have been… but the coffee was rather weak… almost like she had made a single rather than a double shot. Finally, I have to honest in that I wasn’t too excited by the flavour of my drink. It was not anything that really stood out or in the least bit memorable. This is not to say that the coffee was bad… I wouldn’t say it was bad… it just wasn’t anything special.
Leaving the coffee shop, I know for sure that I wasn’t coming back to take the pictures. I am thinking that I might just go checkout the Phinney Ridge location and see if my coffee is much better than the one I got here. After all, it seems like a fair amount of people seem to think the coffee there is pretty decent…
One other interesting thing that I find about Herkimer Coffee is the story behind the logo. At first I was wondering if it was a drawing of the Cascade Mountains or the Olympic Mountains, both of which can be clearly seen from different vantage points in Seattle. But it didn’t look quite right… however, after I poked around a bit on the Herkimer Coffee website I found out that the logo is actually inspired by (or is a drawing of) the old trolley bridge based on a 1930 photo of the bridge in the town of Herkimer, NY. The bridge still stands but is no longer in use.
Kitanda For Brazilian Espresso
Two days ago I was on my way back to from a late lunch when I drove by Kitanda Brazilian Espresso. I have never heard of Brazilian espresso so this certainly caught my eye. In addition to this, since this was in Redmond, this was even more exiting, primarily because the options for good espresso on the east side, i.e. Redmond, Bellevue, Kirkland etc are extremely limited. The only place I can think of right now is Jitters Coffee and even that is not super great. So I resolved to pass by the next morning and find out exactly what Brazilian expresso, as opposed to Brazilian coffee, is all about.
So early the next morning, I stopped by Kitanda. As I was entering the shop, the first thing I noticed was the big Caffè D’arte sign that hang by the window. Hmm… I was thinking, maybe they don’t serve Brazilian espresso after all. But I decided to forge on and see. Maybe they have the Brazilian espresso on the menu. So I walk up to the counter to place my order at the same time taking note of the fact that all the paper coffee cups, and the 1 pound bags of coffee were all Caffè D’arte coffee bags/beans. It became pretty clear to me that I was in for Italian espresso and not Brazilian espresso.
The barista came out from the back. She was really nice and friendly but not too knowledgeable about the specifics of their coffee. The first thing I asked her was that blend of coffee they served… she points to the Caffè D’arte coffee cups and coffee bags and tells me that this was Brazilian espresso. Now I didn’t know whether to call her on her obvious mistake but I thought I’d let it pass. I then asked for a “double tall latte” and she proceeded to tell me that they did not have that particular blend. Ok, now I started thinking to myself that there was still time to back out and go to Jitters instead… but even that thought didn’t really excite me so reluctantly I decided to press on. At the very least I would have something that I could blog about.
So once again I asked for a double tall latte. After a bit of back and forth, I realized that she didn’t understand my request so I pointed out on the menu board exactly what I wanted. She finally got it and told me that she didn’t quite understand my accent and thought I wanted a pineapple latte!!!!!!???? That done, I paid and waited for my latte. I noticed that she was going to make my latte with fat free milk. Ok, one thing I must say is that I think fat free milk is disgusting and totally pointless and is one of the reasons why a lot of deserts here taste like crap but that’s neither here nor there. I was not going to have fat free milk in my latte so I asked her if she has whole milk instead. “Yes” she said with a big smile, “we have 2%”. Ok now here we go again. So I proceed to tell her that 2% != whole milk and she, knowing better than me, proceeds to argue with me. Knowing that I was in a hurry to get to work and I had no time to argue, I decided to try a different approach. So I asked her a simple question, “do you have any milk that has a red top?” “Yes” she replies and goes to the far corner of the shop where she pulls out a gallon of whole milk. I didn’t bother to tell her that Whole Milk == 4% == Container with Red Top.
By now I was thinking, let me get my Italian “Brazilian” espresso and even though it will be pretty bad, at least I will have tried this place and can talk about it. she gives me the latte, I add some white sugar (they don’t stock the sugar in the raw type sugar that I prefer) to it and taste it. Big pleasant surprise, the coffee was actually pretty decent. Certainly way, way more decent than Jitters Coffee or that other alternative on the east side, Starbucks. Clearly, using Caffè D’arte coffee beans was a factor the decent latte I got. The other factor was the whole milk, but I also think that part of it was that she wasn’t too bad when it finally came to making my drink and that to me as the biggest surprise. I am certainly planning on going back from time to time in the mornings.
I didn’t want to ask her anything about the actual Caffè D’arte blend they used in their espresso, but I noticed that the labeling on the Caffè D’arte coffee bags would seem to indicate that Caffè D’arte do a custom blend for them. The custom blend is called Kitanda Gourmet Espresso blend.
But what about this Brazilian thing? Actually the place, which is sort of a Brazilian bakery and cafe, does serve Brazilian cakes, pastries and pasties and other Brazilian type treats. I met the lady who baked a lot of the goodies and she was really nice. I promised them that I would come back and try out some of the goodies… and I certainly intend to keep my promise…
Getting a Great Eggnog Latte
Being that I didn’t really grow up with eggnog, I never really though much about it, nor desired to taste it for that matter. The stuff looked way too rich, yellow and creamy and a little nauseating and I just couldn’t imagine drinking it. And it wasn’t till a couple of years back that I finally decided to try it… and to my surprise, I actually liked it. Don’t ask me why I decided to try it, I think it may have been the spot of rum that gave it the great flavor.
Now, eggnog has become one of my favorite Christmas ‘traditions’ or indulgences if you will… I do enjoy a glass of virgin eggnog once in a while. But that comes with a huge caveat… not all eggnog is made equal… Clearly some eggnog out there, for example the Smith Brothers Farms makes some really tasty eggnog… However, my clear favorite eggnog is that by Organic Valley family of farms. I could drink their eggnog all day… which would certainly not be good for my weight…
And this is also the time when coffee shops and coffeehouses all across the country start offering their eggnog lattes and the like and after having had a great eggnog latte last year (I forget where I ordered the latte) I was looking forward to sampling eggnog lattes over this Christmas holiday season. Thus far, I have sampled eggnog lattes at three or four different coffee shops and to be honest with you, I have yet to find a place where the eggnog lattes are simply delicious. I noticed that the eggnog lattes seem of have an additional, odd and bitter taste/after taste that makes the overall drink experience less enjoyable. The best that I have found so far was the eggnog latte I was served at Arosa (Waffles) Cafe. Part of the reason that their eggnog was better than that of the other coffee shops was because they used the Smith Brothers Farms eggnog. I have noticed that many coffee shops seemed to like the Darigold’s eggnog…. regardless, I have not been wowed by any of the eggnog lattes I have been drinking.
As I was thinking about this, I felt that one of the reasons for the lattes not being so great could have been because the latte was made using too much eggnog. Instead of using pure eggnog and espresso, what if the eggnog was cut or ‘diluted’ with milk? I decided that I would experiment a little. Now on weekend mornings I tend to make my own homemade lattes and today I was going to make my own eggnog latte. But instead of using pure eggnog, I used 2/3th eggnog and 1/3th whole milk. As you can probably guess, I used Organic Valley’s eggnog and also Organic Valley’s whole milk. So I got my Cafe Vita’s Cafe Del Sol beans, ground them pretty fine (so I can get a really strong brew) and pulled the espresso with my really, really old but still working great Krups steam espresso machine. While the espresso was being pulled, I passed the steam through my eggnog and whole milk mixture and got it to my preferred temperature. Once that was ready, I poured my espresso shots into my coffee mug and poured the eggnog milk into the cup. A little sip to taste, a little sugar to taste and I as ready…
And it was just as I thought. My latte was actually pretty good! There was still the slight odd & bitter taste flavor that I mentioned above but other than that, the latte was great. My lesson learned here is that an eggnog latte should not be made from pure eggnog, but should be a mixture of eggnog and milk. The only thing here is to make sure that you have the right i.e good quality eggnog and proper whole milk and to figure out the right proportion of eggnog : whole milk. I started off with 2 : 1 proportion but I think next time I will try the 1:1 ratio. I think this will work perfectly for me.
My goal now is then to go back to Arosa and ask them to do the 1:1 ratio and see how that makes a difference … should be good…
Espresso Daliso Brings Coffee Culture to Renton
It just so happened that I had to go to Renton to conduct some very important personal business when I noticed the sign to the tiny, tiny coffee shop called Espresso Daliso. This shop, located on a street, the name of while I forget but runs parallel to I405 is about the size of a large RV. I mean this place is so tiny, they have one table inside for sitting… there is no additional room for much other then the space in front of the ordering counter for people to stand. I suspect that most will walk in, order their coffee then head on out.
Daliso is owned by a Sue and John who decided that it was time to bring proper coffee to the Renton masses. They were pretty nice and friendly. They told me later, after we had chatted for a while about our mutual interest in good coffee, they were initially suspicious when I walked in carrying my camera yet they thought that the blog was a great idea.
I liked the fact that they were passionate about coffee and the whole coffee culture. Hey told me about their favorite coffee roaster, Batdorf & Bronson which they serve in their shop. For their espresso drinks, they use the Vesuvio blend which I actually like.
It would be nice to go check out the Espresso Daliso once in a while, but I am rarely if ever in that part of Renton so I don’t really know when I will really go back to check out more of their coffees…
Branding Your Coffee Business with Coffee Cup Art
Yesterday, Someone asked me a couple of interesting questions via the comments on one of my photos on my Flickr photostream. The questions he had basically revolved around the importance of having coffee cup art vs. just having excellent coffee served in plain white cups and how important coffee cup art was to me? Since the importance of having coffee cup art (or logo’d cups) is something that I have always been interested in and thinking about blogging about for a while, I thought rather than simply answer the question on my Flickr page, I share my thoughts with the blogosphere and just write a more detailed blog post about it… so here goes…
My answer to the posted questions were in a nutshell yes. Coffee cup art (logo) is an extremely important (and not just to me) to have if you do own a coffee shop because many a time it is that logo that makes someone (i.e. me) curious about the coffee shop, where it is and how good their coffee is. And yet, regardless of this, you, as the coffee shop owner must always ensure that you serve excellent coffee because getting known for bad coffee can break your business.
Now let me go into a little detail. The most important reason for having coffee cup art is brand recognition and it serves as a relatively cheap marketing strategy for your business. However, this issue is not straightforward because brand recognition and marketing is only one component of a successful coffee business and that is key is that you want your brand to be recognized for excellent espresso and not mediocre coffee.
But it can be easy to forget that there are other elements that go into any successful [coffee] business. Over the years I have talked to a few baristas and others in the coffee shop business and from everything I have heard, it is pretty clear that simply serving excellent espresso is no guarantee of success in this business. I have known more than a couple of coffeehouses that served excellent coffee and still went out of business. Stickman Coffee comes to mind… and The Fargonian Coffeehouse is another that I was sad to see go.
Being that running a coffee shop is still in essence running a business, to be successful, you have to fulfill the basic elements that any business does i.e. Product, Promotion, Price and Placement. For the purposes of the coffee shop business I want to look at these elements in the form of location, atmosphere, service (product and placement) and promotion. I will ignore price simply because there tends to be relative price parity among most of the coffee shops and coffeehouses that I tend to visit.
So let’s start with product & placement. Now assuming that the coffee shop serves excellent coffee (otherwise they should not be in business in the first place), the location, atmosphere (or ambiance) and service is clearly the biggest factor as to whether you will have repeat business. You want you coffee shop to be in the right location were you get a lot of potential customer traffic. If you coffee shop is out of the way or hidden, if it’s in an area that doesn’t have easy parking and is also in an area where there is not a lot of foot traffic, then that really makes it difficult for people to frequent your coffee shop.
Once you do have people in your shop, great service, including friendly baristas who remember your name and what your favorite drinks, will tend to make your customers want to come back again. Ambiance will encourage your customers to hang out in the shop and enjoy your espresso there…
Good music, played at reasonable volume level is certainly a must. I can’t remember how many times I have hang out at coffee shops in the evening, working, and having really awesome mellow music playing in the background that is almost relaxing. Some coffeehouses will even go further and have live music at regular times. One good example of this is Faire Gallary Cafe which goes even further by hosting poetry readings and other performances. And now an increasing number of coffeehouses are also turning themselves into art houses and promoting the works of musicians, poets, painters and other local artists. Many will have the works, paintings, photographs and other pieces of art on display (and for sell).
If you have free Wi-Fi which more and more coffee shops are now offering, you will certainly get plenty of folks hanging out there and sometimes this can also present the problem of folks simply taking up space and nursing that one cup of drip they ordered 3 hours ago. I know that Victrola Coffee did have that problem where people with their laptops would take up all the tables and hang out there for hours… so what they did was to turn off the Wi-Fi during the week and turn it on during the weekends.
Once you have these elements in place, only then can should you consider promoting your brand via the coffee cup art (and yes I know that the live art performances can also be considered a form of promotion). Having you coffee shop logo or brand on the cup means that whenever you have people ordering your coffee “to go”, what you have are willing promoters and advertisers for your business. I can’t tell you how many times I have stopped and asked people where they got their coffee from simply based on the coffee cup’s design. I have also had people stop me and ask me the same question and I then directed them to the shop.
Now I know that it is not necessarily cheap to have your own custom logo on your coffee cup. Someone told me it came to about $0.20 per cup, which would be a pretty decent percentage of the cost of the cup. But there are a number of other alternatives of having your coffee cup art done that I have seen in use.
- The first alternative is to get the stickers with your logo on and place those on the cup. Places that do this include Bauhaus Books and Coffee and Arosa [Coffee] Waffles
- Next is the sleeve. I have noticed an increasing number of coffee shops will have their logos on the Sleeve rather than the cup. My understanding is that is cheaper than doing it on the cup. Some of the coffeehouses that do this include Caffe Senso Unico and Zeitgeist Coffee.
- The third option is to get a rubber stamp and stamp your logo on the cup. A large number of coffeehouses seem to prefer this alternative and include heavyweights like Stumptown and Victrola Coffee
- The fourth alternative that I really don’t see much, but not only is the cheapest but is also refreshing is where the coffeehouse will draw or write the logo on each cup by hand. The coffee shop the immediately comes to mind is Katy*s Cafe
- A fifth alternative is to use the cups provided by the coffee roaster who supplies you with your beans. Cafe Vita and Fonte are two roasters that provide cups to the coffee chops that sell their coffee
- And as is true to any business considering a strategy, the final option is to do nothing. There are a number of successful coffee that simply do not logo their coffee cups. One that immediately comes to mind is Zoka Coffee. Yes they do brand their stores and the bags of coffee that they retail but when it comes to the cup, all you get is the plain white cup. But they have excellent coffee and so I still go there… Another is Online Coffee
In conclusion let me tell you a little story. Arosa is one of my favorite coffee shops. They are pretty famous for their waffles but I go there mainly for the coffee. The way I came to find out about it was that someone at my place of work came in with the cup and I thought that the logo was really interesting. I asked her about cup and she told me about the place and how great both the coffee and the waffles are. So I made it a point to go there, which I did a couple of days later. I really enjoyed the coffee and found out that they have a special blend made exclusively for them by Fonte Coffee Roasters. Now even though I have driven by the place a number of times and I have seen their sign, I never really associated them with espresso until I saw the lady at work with one of their cups. If it wasn’t for the coffee cup art, I may never have found the place even they they have one store down the road from where I live and the other is up the road from there I live and I had been driving by one or the other for years.
Even though it was the logo that attracted me to the place, had their coffee been bad, I would never have returned for more…
Café Dharwin, the Neighborhood Coffeehouse
Sometimes when I am on my way to the Eastlake/Wallingford/University District area I will take a certain back route that takes me right past Café Dharwin. This place, located at the Extreme North end of Capitol Hill, somewhat in the Roanoke neighborhood initially attracted my attention because of the name, Dharwin… and this being Seattle, that little city that know not God, I wondered if the owner was trying to make a statement about evolution or something to the effect. So I made it a point to drop by sometime for a latte and see if I could chat with them about the place.
So my first impression of the place when I stepped in what that it was really tiny… but cozy. Since the windows face west and I was there in the afternoon, the place felt warm with lots of great lighting. Perfect for a place like Seattle…
My latte was made for me by Dharmindra the owner. Dharmindra has been in the coffee business for at least seven years and has owned this cafe since 2004. He used to have a partner, I forget the partner’s name but now he is the sole owner. Of course I was itching to ask him about the origins of the name of the cafe. Apparently the name Dharwin came about from the combination of his and his former business partner’s last names i.e Dhar + Win so they weren’t trying to put forth a message of any sort… but what he is trying to put forth is great coffee.
Dharmindra uses Cafe Vita beans… as do a lot of the other places that use Cafe Vita, he brews his espressos using the Cafe Del Sol blend of Cafe Vita coffee beans. He told me that he has been a customer of Cafe Vita for years and he really likes their beans. The latte he made me was pretty decent. It was a good strong cup and good flavor… I really would have liked to have sat down and taken my time to enjoy the sun, the patrons and the cozy atmosphere but I was on my way back from the client site to the office. But my verdict is I would certainly go back and get a latte from there is I was in the area… and relax a bit at the cafe…
The TASTE Café at SAAM
The Seattle Asian Art Museum (SAAM) up on Capital Hill by Volunteer Park runs a little ‘cafe’ that includes a little espresso cart that reminds me of the days when I first got into the latte habit. It reminds me of the time some years back when my friend was a barista working also at an espresso cart and made me a free latte… and got me forever hooked! Thanks Penny! 
Oh and here’s a little trivia for those of you into martial arts, you will recognize the name Volunteer Park as the place where the martial art legend Bruce Lee was buried.
This little cafe, known as The TASTE Café straddles the North and South wings of the museum… and as one would expect, does have some interesting stone art pieces sitting on the shelves and one can admire while drinking their espresso and enjoying their treats.
It has actually taken me quite a while to actually find myself at SAAM when the TASTE Café was open because they have really short operating hours, from 11:00 AM to 3:00 PM, Wednesday to Sunday. I often like to head on out to Volunteer Park to do some photography but most of the times I would go there this past summer, the cafe was already closed. So imagine my delight when I just happened to be there at the right time and I could finally sample the coffee there.
The barista was really nice and let me take a photo of the espresso cart. She too enjoys photography and so we chatted a bit about that and of course coffee. As it turns out, TASTE Café use Torrefazione Italia Coffee beans. They use the Perugia Blend, Perugia being the name of an Italian city, which is their medium roast, full body, rich and smooth blend for espresso. The coffee was actually pretty nice… She made me a nice strong latte that was pretty smooth and despite my hangups about Starbucks, I enjoyed my latte.
I always find it interesting when I find a place that actually uses Torrefazione beans, not because I don’t like the beans (I actually do like them) but because of the whole Starbucks debacle when they bought out Seattle’s Best and proceeded to shut down the Torrefazione coffee shops even though they still sell the beans. You can read my thoughts about that here and also here.
Oh and I forgot to mention, you can also get beer and sake at the cafe too…
Tony's Coffee at Madison Market
The first time I drank a latte that I knew had been brewed with Tony’s Coffee beans, I was rather disappointed. I ordered the drink from a latte stand called Buzz Stop which is just down the street from Madison Market. The second time I ordered a latte with Tony’s Coffee, again I was disappointed and I started thinking that Tony’s Coffee must be not so great coffee.
But the funny thing about this is that I actually all this time I have been drinking Tony’s Coffee for quite a while… and really enjoying it… I just didn’t know that I was drinking Tony’s Coffee. Not until I started blogging about coffee on a regular basis, did I actually find out that Madison Market, a place that I enjoy getting a latte every so often, serves Tony’s Coffee. The irony here being that the coffee stand that served me my bad latte is just down the hill from Madison Market.
This experience, in addition to that I had in Victoria BC where I wasn’t really happy with my latte that happened to have been made with Intelligentsia Coffee beans really made to think more closely about the additional elements of a good latte.. that being not just the beans, but the process, the ingredients (i.e. milk) and also the barista who puts it all together to a hopefully unbelievable experience.
I just happened to have gone shopping at Madison today and I stopped by the espresso counter to chat with the baristas and find out a little more about the blends of Tony’s Coffee that they use for their espresso. What the barista told me was that over the summer they had been using the French Royale blend but they later switched to the Café Carmelita blend which is a medium roast. I guess the French Royale was a little too dark for some of the folks out there.
I plan to venture back to the Buzz Stop and Monkey Grind Espresso Bar, try out their coffee again and see if there has been any improvement… and also what blend they use. I really do suspect that the baristas who served me at the time I happened to place my order were not really good baristas. Hopefully my experience this time will be much better…
Coffee Options in the Corporate World
Sometimes when a consultant is at the client site, he (or she) may need their afternoon coffee fix. And since you don’t want to take off looking for the nearest coffee shop, because your client is paying for you by the hour, you have no choice but to head on over to the kitchen area to forage for a cup of drip.
If your client happens to be a big technology firm who shall remain anonymous for certain reasons, then you’re in luck since they have some halfway decent machines that grind and brew your coffee as you wait. And they also have real milk, a bait, 2% but that’s better than nothing. They also have plenty of latte options in the various cafeterias scattered across their various campuses and buildings. But if you have your ordinary everyday client, then you sort of cross your fingers when you come to the kitchen during the first day site tour. As the client ‘proudly’ shows you around the kitchen. There will usually be the coffee pot and some no name brand of coffee grounds… or even worse, instant coffee…
One thing you find pretty commonly at many offices are the creamers. You have your liquid creamers that try to be gourmet with names and flavors like Irish Cream (for those of you who want some alcoholic flavored coffee), almond and French Vanilla. I’m sorry, who on earth came up with this idea of adding such contaminates to coffee?
Yet in the consulting world, the use of these signal desperate times. You know, those times when you have not other options other than what is available in the kitchen
What I have learned is if I will be working out of a certain office for a while, I will buy whole milk and leave that in the fridge. The added benefit of using whole milk is that most of the folk in the office most likely will not drink whole milk due to the ‘high’ fat content. I tell you, they don’t know what the are missing…