Sunday, December 30, 2007

Good Coffee, Finally

OK, nothing beats Monmouth Coffee Shop yet, but after several weeks enduring mediocre and bad taste caffeine, today I relish to find a real good coffee at this place. And they play good jazz too, it was Miles Davis. Next time I might bring a pack of Sampoerna Mild and join that crowd in their smoking room with big table -- a rarity in this more health conscious western society.

Speaking of Monmouth Coffee, I learned that they just visited Indonesia to sample the best of Sumatra (Lintong, Mandheling, and Gayo). They really should extend the trip to Toraja, I must say. So if you happened to be in the old London at the moment, given their knowledge of properly roasting the beans, I am sure you can have oh-so-good full bodied coffee from Dairi at their place now.

Bill Easterly in his book praises globalization and trade as bringing Colombian coffee closer to his mug, via, well, Starbucks. But even if you condemn that green fairy label for spreading bad coffee and culture, you still could have way better coffee via specialties stores, using the same mechanism (namely international trade).

In trade, both who embrace urban mass culture lifestyle (that chain cafe's addicts) and coffee freaks and snobs (like me) are happy.

6 comments:

  1. Zal, come to Boston, I'll share you my stash of kopi luwak :D

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  2. Pasha, I know you want my pack of`Sampoerna Mild. :-))

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  3. Ah, the beauty of trade...

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  4. Man, I don't need your sampoerna...hehehe. But I guess you want to have gudang garam surya pro, djarum super and dji sam soe maybe? :-))

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  5. Yup, kopi luwak is superb. Just taste it the first time last week.

    As 2 years inhabitant of the coffee addict country (a.k.a Italy), I am quite surprise by the quality and the taste of kopi luwak.

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  6. poor Rizal, suffering months of mediocre coffee :-(....

    I told you you should start appreciating small towns, as this place (http://www.somecrust.com/) has managed to keep the coffee snob in me quite satisfied...;-)

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