Sorry Dan, please don’t take it personally – I read you blog and I dig your stuff, but this one doesn’t pass it for me. At the cost of sounding like a broken Italian vinyl I hereby state that Starbucks is one of the worst coffee experiences one could think of. Leaving aside all the corporate hate that surrounds it, which I don’t care much about, it’s a natural reaction for me to oppose any positive comment about SB.
It Just Plain Sucks
While coffee quality may be a nano-notch above similar chains, the way they serve coffee is sad. I mean it. Queuing up at the till, looking up that abomination of a menu with those uber-silly names, dealing with a depressed “barista”, waiting for your paper cup at the end of the counter sucks. Sucks if you have experienced coffee in a wholly different way, fast served at a banged-up steel counter, in smoking hot thick and chipped ceramic cups in a real no-name family ran bar. Sure these no-name places are the standard in Italy, but I found great coffee bars elsewhere, including the US, and I am sure you know what I am talking about.
True, your post is not much about Starbucks and more about instant coffee (which makes me think of it as drug assumption rather than an experience)… But I had to let the SB rant go, I had to let my fingers drop on the keyboard for this one. It’s a twitch I got, or maybe a natural reflex, ∞ may know. It’s coffee my friend, you don’t do bad things to coffee, coffee likes you.
Hope you understand,
Tomm