The wife and I went out for a wonderful date night together this past Saturday, we had a wonderful dinner at Hibachi in center city Philadelphia, fresh made sushi and new york strip teriyaki… wonderful.
However we took a walk after in search of a late night cafe to have dessert. Couldn’t find anything so after a while wandering past street side bars and pubs we stopped at Cosi on Walnut street. I ordered a double espresso and my wife an iced tea.
What took place after that can only be described as horrible. The barista used already ground beans pre-packed from god knows when in the espresso machine and pushed two demitasse glasses under the spout. After the burnt smelling extraction belched forth the barista then poured both shots into a papercup. I wish the offer had been made to use ceramic we were dining in after all, but then I saw the demitasse glasses had coffee stains all down the side, and were in fact dirty, remnants of who knows how many previous shots were caked on the glass.
I was tired and didn’t want to make a scene, rest assured next time it won’t matter the swill was vile, and the more I think about the dirty glasses the worse I feel. My wife’s iced tea even tasted rancid, how hard is it to make a passable Iced Tea? So the long and the short of this is I won’t be heading to any Cosi anytime soon, and I hope you’ll think twice about patronizing them as well.
I really feel sorry for espresso fans that live outside the Pacific NW. ;)
MAS, I go between wishing people would “get” espresso around here and just biting the bullet and opening a shop myself doing it right.
There were a good many cafe’s we passed while walking just all of them closed early. When we visited San Fran there were plenty of outdoor open late cafe’s I guess i just expected more from the venture. We had a limited walking radius available to us as Jen wasn’t cleared for Urban Combat / Hiking yet