Edward
Bartender
- Messages
- 25,074
- Location
- London, UK
Never liked coffee, I'm a tea and diet coke guys so I can't help you on this topic.
But since you mentioned having had a lot of bad coffee I think I never had a (really) bad cup of tea...
Aren't there as big quality differences with tea than with coffee?
Apparently not... With tea, a decent leaf (and either filtered water or water from a non-hard water area) goes a long way, and it's hard to really screw it up. That said, the one place I find it almost impossible (outside McDs or Starbucks) to get a decent cup of what we would regard as regular tea is, ironically, China. There I instead go for a local variety; chrysanthemum tea is especially nice.
As a species, we tea drinkers tend not - in my experience, at least - to be as obviously picky about varieties and such as coffee drinkers, though in reality I suspect that's only because tea rituals haven't been profitably exploited here in the West to the same extent. Yet.
I've encountered a certain pretentious type on the British vintage scene who sneer at coffee because it's "American". Folks who don't know their history, of course, as coffee houses were huge in England long before tea was readily and affordably available. Funny how often pretentious ninnies' prejudices don't stand up to analysis...
Trash-talking Starbucks is a popular pastime among some of my hipper friends and associates in Seattle, where Starbucks got its start and where it is still headquartered, in what used to be the “main” Sears store.
It's fashionable in many quarters here to rag on them too. There are some fair criticisms of them - and I do tend to prefer an indy myself - but all the same they are better than many corporates for how they treat their workforce. Sometimes they're also preferable to going into a pub if you're not interested in drinking alcohol on a given day. I used to quite enjoy finding a window seat at the one on Oxford Street during Christmas Shopping Madness when I'd inevitably done my shopping in September, and sit and watch everyone else going nuts out the window.
A fair few little indy cafes and coffee houses have sprung up as my patch of East London has gentrified over the last couple of decades. I like to see them; I hope they survive the Covid / Brexit recession.