7/23/2007

india here we come

The ark of my itinerary to India shadowed the unusual ark of my life--Detroit to Paris to Delhi.  At the university, I studied international relations, French and law.  Now, somehow the disparate areas were being blended together through coffee.  Coffee is the second most widely traded commodity in the world after oil.  Coffee has its international bona fides.  It has green ones, too, since coffee grows in its own self-sustaining ecosystem unlike oil which requires pollutions both to extract it, refine it, transform it into consumer products and burn it in your car. (More on the green issue in another post).  

What do the U.S., France and India have to do with coffee?  Well, India grows it, France has refined its consumption into the artform of the cafe and the U.S. has remarketed the coffeehouse concept to the world (for good or for ill--I saw too many Starbucks in Paris). 

In Delhi, a city of some 13 million people, you have the density but not the tradition for a coffee opreration.  In India, coffee tends to be consumed more in the south, where it is grown.  My brother and I, although appreciators of tea, needed some espresso.  We found a new chain called Barrista on Connaught Place.  The coffee house was patterned after the U.S. model:  funky lights; overstuffed chairs; right down to the pastry case just before the register for impulse purchases.  The Italians had a piece of the action, too, with a Cimbali M32 espresso machine and Lavazza coffee.  All the way to India for this?  I could have stayed home.  The biggest difference was that with so many people in India, there was tableside service.  Let them serve coffee.  That and the fact that the Kashmiri guy who sat down next to us, tried to sell us carpets from his store which by amazing coincidence was right upstairs.  When we wouldn't visit his store, he told us that our driver would try to steer us toward shopping at certain stores where the driver would get a 35% kickback from our purchases.  Then the driver, after he saw us talking to the Kashmiri guy, told us that the Kashmiri always followed foreigners into the coffee house to sell them carpets.  Mutually assured destruction.  I've got my mind on my money and my money on my mind.

All of India feels like a bazaar where everything is for sale and everything is negotiable.  The coffee business and law prepared my for this kind of wheeling and dealing.  It is purely cultural.  You won't find this in England, unless you're in an Indian store.  My dad used to tell me there was no such thing as a fixed price and embarass me by constantly negotiating with merchants.  I have learned to embrace my roots, however, and now revel in the art of asking for the 'best price.'  We were at the bazaar in Jaipur, Rajasthan where women wear bright orange and yellow saris, men wear pointy-toed shoes and it's not uncommon to see a camel pulling a load of bricks down the middle of the street.  There we stopped for a coffee at a street vendor.  He had a great vat of boiling water and a large seive into which he put ground coffee and spices.  He held the sieve over the water until the water boiled, then he would turn off the heat and hold up the sieve to allow the coffee to settle.  He repeated these steps several times then poured off the liquid without the grounds into clear glasses.  We stood there and drank the coffee fragrant with cardamom in the 126 degree heat (with humidity).  Of course another vendor chatted us up while we drank about visiting his store which was just around the corner.

My coffee experiences in India reconfirmed that the best approach remains using the best quality beans you can import, roasting and packaging them locally, serving the coffee fresh just after grinding the beans and enjoying the outcome in a lovely cafe.  If you stop into our shop you'll see a Cimbali espresso machine and Lavazza coffee but for something truly unique why don't you try one of our new coffees from India.  If you negotiate with me I might even give you my best price.

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