imagined-community

Teacups are the spring blossoms of coffee drinking; they remind me of grandmothers, my best friend’s kitchen, and drinking Nescafé in Britain. About a year ago I began collecting teacups; I now have a small boxful stashed away in my closet. When I began collecting, I thought I might make candles with them. Then, as I was admiring my little collection, I suddenly remembered something I had thought about when I lived in San Francisco. Back then I used to sit outside on the patio at a small vegetarian café and drink coffee. This café had the most amazingly eclectic collection of extraordinary teacups, silverware, plates, and glasses, none of which matched. Drinking my coffee from a charmingly not-new teacup (coffee refills were free and plentiful), I imagined some unknown person at a weekend rummage sale patiently sorting through box after box of tableware, their persistence rewarded with each unexpected discovery of porcelain beauty. I remember thinking very clearly that if I ever had a café I would do the same thing with my tableware. I wasn’t going to buy fancy dishes fresh from the factory. I would give people simple, surprising and unusual moments of beauty by sharing objects seasoned with the mysteries of ordinary life.

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Cafe Rustica, Somerville

Six weeks till I board a plane for a 3-week trip to France. It’s been four years since I last visited Europe and I am definitely starting to feel joy. Earlier this evening I was reading “Almost French.” As I read the author’s description of her daily morning ritual at a Paris café, I couldn’t help but reflect on my own love of French cafes. There are plenty of good cafes in the Boston, Cambridge, Somerville area (my favorite is probable 1369 in Inman Square ), yet nothing in the States is quite the same as a café in France. They are just plain different. The last time I was in France I was living in Aix-en-Provence, where I immediately developed my own morning café ritual. Each morning I would walk three blocks to the city center, buy a copy of Libération from a kiosque, and then meander across the street to “my” café by the fountain, usually sitting outdoors at a small metal table. Then I would slowly drink two espressos (well, I AM an American coffee addict) close to peoples of various sizes, sexes, and ages, who were also leisurely greeting the whole being awake / doing the day thing. There is something about a French café, je ne sais quoi, that is at once intimate, social, inclusive, and respectful of the existential solitude (how French of me) of the individual. I can’t wait to go to France!

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Kombucha Tea has been all the rage among organic foodies on the US West Coast for well over a year, and on Sunday I decided to try this tea made from a symbiosis of yeast and bacteria. Like many foods, Kombucha has led a truly transnational life. Kombucha’s first recorded use was in China, after which it migrated to Russia, and then later appeared in Eastern Europe (however, fermented Kombucha should not be confused with the unfermented Japanese Kombucha). After arriving in the United States, probable somewhere in Portland or the Bay area, Kombucha has begun trekking the US in a cute little bottle labeled Kombucha Wonder Drink. Perhaps Kombucha’s cross-cultural history is the reason why Portland’s Kombucha Wonder Drink Company deliberately chose a geographically ambiguous design for the beverage. The logo is slightly Arabic and the subtitle, “Himalayan tonic,” links it to — India, Nepal, Bhutan, Tibet? Plus, the label tells us that Kombucha spread across Eurasia and is revered on every continent! Wow! Talk about your global drink!

If you’re interested in the “good health, great longevity, inner serenity and incisive mental clarity” that the Kombucha Wonder Drink Company claims their tea promotes, you may want to read a beverage review or two before buying. I found the tea a bit too bracing but not as awful as Dan Meyer at the Energy Drink Review. A more balanced review can be found at Knowledge for Thirst.

Looking for something a bit trendier? Well, you could pick up the beverage that all the Hollywood stars are drinking, Synergy Trilogy Kombucha. According to last week’s New York Magazine, in an article entitled, “Tea Party: A Stinky Drink for Hollywood Yogis,” Hollywood is going gonzo for the stuff:

What smells a bit like compost, promises to restore your digestion, liver function, and cell integrity, and is all the rage this summer among the city’s holistic elite? Kombucha. The organic, bottled Chinese tea (pronounced kom-BOO-cha) is cultured for 30 days to produce its “active enzymes” and “antioxidants.” It’s also got authentic—albeit grody-looking—green strands floating in it. In Hollywood, it’s already so popular—see Kirsten Dunst lounging with a bottle of it in Us Weekly!—that it’s become a sort of inside joke. On a recent episode of Entourage, a director was house-sitting for his girlfriend’s parents in a mansion they bought with a Kombucha fortune. G.T. Dave’s Kombucha brand is probably the trendiest: He started bottling it after watching his mother drink it during her battle with breast cancer. Dave says his company ships cases directly to Paramount studios and CAA. “Andy Dick drinks it every day,” he boasts, adding that he doesn’t have a mansion. In April, Dave, 26, finally got East Coast distribution. “It’s flying off the shelves,” says Paul Weiner, Fairway’s natural-foods coordinator.

– New York Magazine

As for me — I tried it. And now I think I’ll go back to my coffee. Maybe you just have to live on the West Coast to truly appreciate live culture in a bottle. Kevin in Seattle suggests that the bad taste is a little like Jagermeister ( you can see him downing some Kombucha tea at KEXP Blog ).

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