Coffee

What is it with the British and Coffee? We just don't seem to do it well. I think I tend to forget how badly we do it until I've been abroad again, and then when I come back I realise just how bland and tasteless coffee is over here. This afternoon I had a Costa Coffee's Cappuccino and it was dreadful. The stuff below the froth was wishy-washy and the foam itself had no real complexity to it - it was simply "there". The sprinkling of chocolate did little to add to the (lack of) experience.
View this beauty pictured here - a Barraquito, a speciality coffee of Spain. Traditionally it's something of a pick-me-up, in the way Tiramisu is in Italy. OK this is no cake, but it's a coffee-and-alcohol shot in much the same way. It's made with such care and attention - condensed milk, Liquor 43, coffee, milk and foam. A sliver of lemon peel floats in the foam and the whole is dusted with cinnamon. It is simply to die for. OK,you can view this as a bit of a "novelty" coffee (even though it is a traditional coffee, and not really a novelty as such), but it knocks the socks off Starbuck's novelties, and at a price of under £1 a cup, it has Starbucks whipped for value too.
But even "ordinary" coffee tastes better. In Greece, if you want a "bog standard" coffee, you ask for a Nescafe. Well, that leaves you in no doubt what you're going to get - good old fashioned instant coffee. But it tastes so much better! Better even than a Costa Coffee "real" coffee. How, I don't know. Maybe everything just tastes better when the sun shines down!
Anyway, the upshot of all this is that I'm dying for a good coffee right now, but it won't be till June when I next have one. Till then I may as well stick to tea.