Bravo Greek Coffee (490 g.)
Item Purchased: Bravo Greek Coffee (490 g.)Location Purchased: Artopolis / 306 S. Halsted St. / Chicago, IL
Price: $6.50 + tax
Review: My name is Kevin, and I am a Greek Coffee addict.
Thank you for the applause, but I don't deserve it. You see, ever since my girlfriend's mother gave me a briki and bag of stoned coffee, I have come to enjoy not only the density and flavor of this Icarus dust, but the process of preparing it as well. Every morning I find myself rushing half naked into the kitchen to carefully spoon the delicious powder (with equal parts crystalline sugar) into an eager water bath atop the open blue flame. Oh that beautiful flame, calling to me from the exhilarating heights of consciousness.
I do not partake in my addiction to get away from it all like so many other addicts do. No, I do it to bring myself fully and quickly into it all.
Obviously, I wasn't into it all when I purchased this bag of Bravo brand Greek Coffee, because I didn't notice the Mexican caricature on the package until I got home and made my first demitasse of enlightenment. It seems that much like our Frito Bandito and Juan Valdez, an image of a hispanic man also says "coffee" to Greece.
Though not as strong as the Loumidis brand Greek coffee I was given, Bravo is a bit less expensive. I'm not sure if the sticky consistency of the bag's contents make that difference in price worth it though. Still, any Greek coffee saves me from wasting half of the full pot of coffee my eyes force me to make when brewing American style.
I will show you my gritty, grainy addiction here, raw and jump-cut new-wave style:
The amount of coffee you end up with is just a bit more than an espresso shot. Powerful and pleasant to the taste, one of these will probably be enough to kick-start your day, but if not, it is easy enough to make another one. Often times, I will make myself a double...
...but I don't have a problem. I can handle my coffee.
Rating: 3.5 / 5
posted by Kevin | permalink |
6 Comments:
Wow.
Not only am I proud of sharing the addiction to Greek coffee (for a long time it was part of my morning routine), I am also proud to report that I have, in fact, been riding the digital wave like the greatest surfer of Generation Y.
Is that a tattoo of an eye on your wrist? I am inclined to think that it is. However, verification is required. It may be a leftover stamp from the night before, or a birthmark.
It is a tattoo of an eye on my wrist. I have one on each wrist.
Now that you mention it, I kind of wish that it was a birthmark. Of course, with a birthmark like that, I would most likely have grown up to be a character in a trilogy of fantasy novels.
A tiny comment about a relativity of taxonomy. That this kind of coffee is called Greek (the fact which is know by most of the educated people of the world), I learned only after coming to the US. When I was growing up in Soviet Lithuania, we used to make coffee in a similar way, but with no sugar added. You take a strong, bitter coffee, which the Russians had imported from God knows where and then passed it to the foreign-goods- craving-Lithuanians, add some cold water and then heat it until it boils. We called it Russian coffee. That was basically the only form of narcotics available for a pre-teen kid. So we consumed quite a lot of that stuff, together with my mom. When you are 12 and not exposed to any other form of drugs, it worked quite well in terms of feeling at least a little high. Another difference in this sci-fi-like long gone world, was that we used to prepare coffee this way not because of being big coffee consoisseurs, but because the iron wall prevented us from even imagining things like modern coffee-makers. Who can now deny that repression fosters creativity?
Vladas,
Thanks for that.. I have actually heard it referred to as Russian coffee. Also Turkish or Armenian coffee. I did not, however know of the history behind its exportation in the Soviet world.
Perhaps it is not only repression that fosters creativity, but access in general. During the frontier years, American cowboys used a similar method to brew coffee over their campfires by mixing cold water with a more coarsly ground coffee (similar to the pre-ground coffee we buy at the supermarket in large cans today). When they drank the coffee, it was common for them to have several grounds in the bottom of their cups. My grandfather used to brew his coffee over the stove this way. He called it Cowboy coffee. I wouldn't call the cowboys of the frontier era repressed, but definitely impoverished.
I've always thought that not only necessity, but also the free time to foster unnecessary desires (whether it stems from impoverishment, wealth, repression or freedom) are the mothers of invention (no, not your national hero's backing band). The question to ask is which form of invention yields the greatest results? Or does the mixture of an elite and impoverished class yield the best results when working together?
-Kevin
Ironically, during the Soviet era, the impoverished working class (proletariat) was (at least theoretically) considered to be nation's elite. And the problem with creativity in that kind of environment is lack of knowledge about the outside world. Sometimes you're just doomed to keep re-inventing a bicycle, because you're not aware of one's existance... After spending almost 4 years on this side of Atlantics I still bump into quite a few such a bicycles in my daily life, despite trying my best to catch up.
I agree with you on the utopian cooperation between the impoverished and elite. I'm looking forward to see this maybe in my present life. All in all, I think you know that I am not a big fan of the Soviet era, nor I am a stupid Eastern European glorifying achievements of capitalism. I just think that the latter still can be improved to better, and communism, as well as certain forms of socialism, are already beyond any repair.
But what it has to do with a good cup of coffee anyway?..
"But what it has to do with a good cup of coffee anyway?.. "
Uhm... It keeps us awake long enough to put forth the effort toward cooperation and improvement?
(or it just tastes good)
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