Hasty Coffee Drinking Makes Waste

This morning started like any other Saturday. Ms. Darkroasted and I woke up Tiny Roast and got ready for a day out together. However, Tiny Roast was not interested in being overly cooperative today and so it took forever to get out of the house. In the process, I forgot to make myself a coffee with my nifty new Nespresso Coffee Maker. So of course, I needed my morning fix.

We went to the Metro Diner in Annapolis for breakfast. I love this chain that has about 20 locations throughout the region. I had a mind-blowing Belgian waffle with a vanilla, powdered sugar and maple syrup glaze.  Two minutes into the meal, Tiny Roast dumped a full glass of milk all over the floor and the servers at the diner fell all over themselves to clean it up and make sure we were not inconvenienced.  We caused the problem, but they were ready to serve. This brings me to the coffee.

If their coffee was half as good as the food and the service, how could I go wrong. So I stepped up to the counter for a cappuccino.

I took a quick drink and I told my wife, it's not bad. Who was I kidding, it wasn't so great. Ms. Darkroasted took one sip and then dared me to finish it. I could not. No offense Metro Diner, but diner coffee is the one constant in this world. I knew I was going to the mall next and could easily make it to Starbucks. Why did I jump the gun with bad coffee? This story was not over.

We drove over to the Annapolis mall to do some shopping and as we entered Macy's, I noticed a Keurig display where they were giving away free cups of coffee. We have one of these machines in our office and I figured it was better than nothing. As I started to make my cup, a rude woman who was doing demos on the machine informed me that only she could touch the coffee maker. I tried to remain polite as she told me the boring story of the Keurig single cup maker. (I just wanted the coffee)

This cup wasn't that great either. When I asked the saleswoman about the cost per cup, she told me a price point that is only nominally lower than Nespresso with a quarter of the taste. Now I was into my second bad cup of coffee of the day. When we finally got to Starbucks I didn't need any more coffee and Tiny Roast is the only one who got anything he wanted (his standard vanilla milk.)  He didn't settle for anything but the best and got just what he wanted.

The moral of this story is simple. Never, never, never settle for a bad cup of coffee and diner coffee will always be diner coffee. Keep it dark roasted.