Coffee, Coffee, Which Coffee Do You Want?

When I went out with my 20-year-old nephew for a coffee recently - not to your typical Starbucks or Café Coffee Day, but to one of those new-found ‘roastery cafés’ that roast and grind the coffee they serve - I took a while to understand the coffee options listed on the menu. 

It simply wouldn’t do to order a cappuccino that was too lame a choice to be ordered, especially when the nephew was a coffee head. And not with so many trending coffee options clearly on choice, which fellow diners (read: mostly millennials) were sipping on, with some cool, peppy numbers playing in the background. I must hasten to add here, I consider myself more of a tea enthusiast. So, put me in one of those dainty tea parlours, and I will airily order my Oolong and First Flush Darjeeling, but when it comes to coffee, it is usually espressos, cappuccinos and most certainly South Indian filter coffee, whose unmistakable aroma and flavour very few non-coffee drinkers can resist. I mean I know a Latte from an Americano, but that is where my coffee know-how ends.

 So, is Vietnamese egg coffee, which is a coffee brew topped with a custard made of egg yolks, condensed milk and a dash of vanilla essence (to cut the eggy smell). It is named so because it originated in Vietnam but is quite popular in the West, especially in Australia.

While coffee-making merchandise is being retailed these days, along with crockery, the ways of serving your coffee are also changing. For example, if you are in a hurry, and want to grab a coffee, fear not as you can get your coffee, completely spill proof, in a can. If you want to have your cold brew in peace at home, brands like Blue Tokai offer you cold brew bags too and pour overs are available online with several players.

The pioneer in giving coffee drinking a community feel, with its unique cafes offering a spacious, informal and comfy vibe, the Hyderabad-based Roastery Coffee House, has opened multiple outlets in Kolkata (a tea-drinking city), Noida, Delhi (in the buzzing f&b space of Khan Market), Lucknow and Jaipur and has plans for more cities. This is in a period of just five years since inception. Its founder Nishant Sinha, a hotel management graduate, clearly had the vision that coffee culture was set to grow and specialty coffees did grow in awareness and online presence during the pandemic years, and we are not just talking about Dalgona coffee, which nobody wants to remember.

And the very fact that the much-trending café Roast as its name suggests is open all day, all week goes to show how coffee has plenty of takers in India today. Blue Tokai, Koinonia Coffee, Araku Coffee etc are a growing tribe of indigenous artisanal coffee blends, and that’s surely good news for caffeine addicts. So, next time you order your coffee, ladies and gentlemen, be coffee bean/roasting/technique savvy. Cheers!