It’s certainly a fact that we enjoy coffee. And, to boot, we enjoy good coffee. Give us an elaborate drink from Discourse any day. We love reading about the thoughtfulness and variety of Stone Creek’s options for a simple black cup. Trying new high quality brews in new places is a blast (Gabe recently had a blast with a cardamom-infused blend at the Yemeni coffee shop Qamaria in Greenfield and Saúl highly recommends their Pistachio Tres Leches Cake). And we are always touched by a good story like Isabella Rivera’s passion for Puerto Rico and coffee brought together at the BizStarts Community Market’s Isla Bella Coffee Roaster.
We are not, however, coffee snobs. Gabe has--and without complaint--drank some pretty bad cups of coffee in his life. His home set up is rather simple and sometimes goes awry (though he might not always like to admit it). Saúl actually finds joy in a burnt espresso shot. It reminds him of simpler times and serves a reminder that there is no such thing as a perfect cafecito.
Of course, people assume we are, and probably rightfully so. They imagine elaborate home set ups and only the best beans roasted in house in a back laboratory, possibly calling to mind José Arcadio Buendia’s alchemy lab from Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude (read the book for sure, but the Netflix adaptation ain’t bad). They think we scorn drip coffee offerings or, even worse, diner unlimited, burnt ground refills. Small side note, Gabe’s dad (Colombian mind you) used to call such offerings dishwater, even as he guzzled it down. But the honest truth is, we are not. We love coffee and appreciate a good cup. Sometimes we even think we can feel a bit of those notes of caramel, fruit, or cacao on our tongue, though it may be just the suggestive and descriptive marketing.
This is why we love Milwaukee and its coffee scene. It’s diverse and allows for exploration. In a couple of hundred words, we have already noted places rooted in Puerto Rico and Yemen, offering brews from beans grown in countries across the world. And we haven’t even touched the great Mexican coffee shops on the southside (shout out to La Finca expanding to a second location), or some Black-owned, community shops that have opened up recently like Kinship Cafe in the new ThriveOn King space.
These spaces are neither snobby or overly hipster. Stone Creek, for example, boasts elaborate descriptions and complex and intricate ways its coffee is grown, roasted, brewed, and marketed. Yet, all are truly welcome in its shops and baristas never look down on any order. This is us - enjoying and seeking out the complex and new, but also enjoying the real, the local, and the everyday.
To wrap up, can you tell that in this holiday season we have been trying to spread the love and name as many good, local shops as we can? Ultimately, that’s what it is all about to us. It’s about a smell, a taste, an experience, a community, a city, and a humble bean. In this holiday season filled with so much for us and so much in the world, we just wanted to take a moment to express the joy and gratitude for that bean’s role in our lives and what MKE means to us, no matter the way you serve it to us. Or gift it to us ; )
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