The Perfect Coffee Shop 

Photo by Nathan Dumlao on Unsplash

My love affair with coffee started in the ‘dosa’ joints of Calcutta during my college days. The hot sugary liquid, served in a steel cup placed in a matching steel tumbler, was the best coffee that a college allowance could buy. The ‘filter coffee’ that they served was way better than any instant coffee that was available then or even now.  

I had the real taste of coffee much later on my business trips to Europe and the US. The coffee shops attracted me more for their ambiance rather than the coffee. They were places where one could just sit and watch the world go by.  As the years passed, I realized that I savored the coffee aroma more that the coffee taste. The smell of freshly brewed coffee is stimulating as well as refreshing. I made it a point to visit a coffee shop at every opportunity. I would choose small family run coffee shops because I thought the coffee and the food was authentic and so was the conversation. 

Those were times when the electronic appendages that are a dominant part of our life today were still in their infancy. Coffee shops were a great place to catch up with my reading, a habit which I sorely miss today.  

The coffee chains like the CCD and Barista started proliferating the metros in India right about the time I decided to give up my full-time job and set up a consulting practice of my own. Coffee shops offered the anonymity to work uninterrupted as well as set up meetings with clients. The added bonus was the constant wafting coffee smell. 

The ambiance in the coffee shops in India ten years back were a lot different than today. There were distinct categories of people for each of these chains. Barista and Costa had a more Business clientele whereas CCD catered to a younger crowd.  

The coffee joints, at least in Delhi, have changed a lot in the past ten years. Highs real estate costs have forced many of them to shut shop. The clientele too has changed over the years. And the coffee has got more expensive. 

Unlike their European counterparts, the Indian coffee shops do not offer an opportunity to ‘observe’ life as you sip coffee and catch up with whatever it is that you want to do. Umair Haque in his article ‘The Bistro and the Promenade - What We Can Learn from the French Way of Life’, has some very interesting observations gleaned from his own life in Paris and Montreal. A point in case is his observations about the way the chairs in the bistros are usually placed not across each other but side by side allowing conversations, laughter even falling in love. People gossip, share grief or in silence watch the world go by.  

Watching the world go by is therapeutic! It is fascinating to observe people. With my keen interest in marketing and therefore consumer behavior, I game the process challenging myself to predict the next move of the young couple or the old matriarch, with equal fervor.  

For me the Perfect Coffee shop allows me to work on my device if I need to. Read. Plug in my device to recharge if I need to (yes, I have been refused at a few places in Delhi). Watch life go by when I want to.  

There were a few places that matched my expectations. But all of them are gone. Or their coffee has become too esoteric for my liking. My need to ‘smell the coffee’ urges me stay in the hunt for that elusive Perfect Coffee Shop. Every day I keep looking.