The coffee here is incredible. The coffee in Spain is fantastic. The coffee in Belgium, France and Scandinavia is wonderful. The best coffee I’ve ever had is in Java. It actually had a creamy, rich, sweet taste, like it had Bailey’s in it or something. Everywhere except in North America, the default coffee you get is superb by our standards.

In North America, you can get okay coffee if you ask for it, but then that gets really complicated, doesn’t it? You have to know to call it a “mezzo-caff frappaccino with cinnamon but hold the chocolate sprinkles, no whip. What? Oh, to go. Uh, sorry, I mean With Wings“.

The default coffee you get when you simply order “coffee” in North America is the filtered, bitter hot water most of us have grown used to and actually like. I used to get irritated with people who demanded more than that; I considered it “coffee snobbery”. I once berated my dear friend Captain Dramatic for returning coffee at the Brûlerie St-Denis. It wasn’t bad coffee, it didn’t have salt instead of sugar in it, it just wasn’t all that good. I said he was being a “Mamby-Pamby Euro-Git” (yes, an MPEG).

Well, I’ve converted to “coffee snobbery”. I’m the MPEG. I don’t think it’s snobby to expect great coffee when everyone else in the world is drinking it. I’ve never been any place where people have been satisfied with such low-quality coffee as the kind we drink. I don’t think there’s a pagoda, an igloo, a cave outside North America where people drink it.

All I’m saying is, we should change the North American default. This is one area in which we could take a lesson from… take your pick, anywhere else.