One of the words I picked up on my very first visit to the US many years ago was “faucet”. It appears to be an old word but in most English speaking countries it refers to a tap on a barrel whereas in the US and Canada it means just a tap. In my frequent visits to the US, I often find myself staying in a relatively cheap hotel. When I get in the shower in one of these places I find, often, that the faucet control is one-dimensional. There is a device that can be rotated to change the temperature of the water, but it also controls the flow rate. That is, I can have a hotter shower but only at the expense of more (or sometimes less) water. A faucet control should have two independent variables – flow rate, and temperature. On older showers, washbasins, kitchen sinks, etc this was done by having two taps – hot and cold – with independent controls. My “modern” kitchen tap has a rotating action for temperature and an up-down one for flow. Tap control is a two variable problem.
Another two variable problem that Americans get wrong is in the making of hot chocolate. Unfortunately, with rare exceptions so do Australian cafes. In the US, I have yet to find an acceptable hot chocolate. I am sure they exist, I just haven’t found one, certainly none of the chains. Starbucks is the worst I am prepared to drink and with little enthusiasm. There are, unfortunately, many worse. At least in the US, so I’m told by coffee drinkers, the coffee is equally bad.
In Melbourne, we pride ourselves on the coffee culture. I go to cafes where they have a range of coffees from Kenya, Columbia, Indonesia, Jamaica and many other places, They have a variety of roasts and serve it in all kinds of ways – cappuccino, expresso, latte, flat white, long black, macchiato, and so on. If one doesn’t drink coffee the possibilities are very restricted.
Tea often comes in a cheap paper tea bag and is limited to a choice between green and black; occasionally there are a few Twinings varieties. But that’s like serving a range of different instant coffees. Loose leaf tea is the only way that should be acceptable in anything but a transport cafe. The range of available teas is vast – far more than there are types of coffee. A quick search online for “How many kinds of tea are there?” illustrated the ignorance of westerners: green tea is typically lumped into one category. How can one identify Longjing with Buddha’s tears with Bilouchun? Apparently Tie Guan Yin and Rougui and both just “oolong”. And where is a cafe that serves puerh tea? But there is hope: provision for tea drinkers is improving in Australia, slowly. More and more cafes are using non-paper bagged tea which is already an improvement and more choice is available in a few cafes. And one or two Chinese tea houses are springing up in places.
Turning to hot chocolate, the situation in the US is beyond disgraceful, but in Australia it is little better. As hinted at, I have a rating system in which Starbucks rates 0 and anything worse than that is undrinkable. Most cafes in Melbourne never get above 3 – my highest potential score is 10. To understand the problem let us contemplate the ingredients of a hot chocolate. There is of course milk – though when I make it at home I often use water and add a little milk. But what is the key ingredient? I’ll give you a clue – the answer is in the name. Coffee drinkers want their coffee to taste of coffee, tea drinkers want their tea to taste of tea, and hot chocolate drinkers want their HCs to taste of chocolate – and NOT just sugar! This is not rocket science. I am guessing that most cafes use a syrup or powder that is a mix of sugar and chocolate (in that order) and pour over hot milk – plus all the frothy stuff that they want to decorate to prove that being a barista is an art. But that is really unacceptable – taste is the over-riding quality in assessing a cup of HC and, frankly, Melbourne, on the whole your HCs are crap!
There are one or two places (and I mean one or two) in Melbourne that I’ve found that understand what hot chocolate means but 99% of cafes serve disgusting rubbish – and I’ve chosen my words carefully. One place I found used a good dark chocolate powder – at least 70% chocolate – for a while but then decided to change it to a 50% milk chocolate powder despite my complaints. What’s the point of using a milk chocolate when you are going to dissolve it in milk? Just use less dark chocolate and add a bit of sugar.
Which brings me back to the two variable problem. Apart from the milk, which I’ve commented on above, the two key ingredients are chocolate and sugar. If they are premixed in a syrup or powder you have no control over the relative sweetness/chocolateyness of the drink. In one cafe where I complained about the lack of chocolate taste they offered more syrup but that doesn’t solve the problem – it also means more sugar.
Here’s one in the eye for you cafe managers in Melbourne. If I go in a cafe in Manila, I can on average get much much better HCs than in Melbourne. Filipinos understand chocolate because of their historical connection to Mexico when both were under Spanish rule. And chocolate is grown in the Philippines. Incidentally, Filipinos often grind up the chocolate tablets (which is how it is sold in Manila) with cashew nuts. The nuts make the drink thicker without making it overly milky – or sugary.
But the best HC I have ever had was in the beautiful city of Dresden in Germany. There I was served a HC with no sugar at all – it was made with 100% chocolate. I found it a little too bitter and had to add a small quantity of sugar – but I controlled it, Coffee or tea drinkers would not want their drink pre-sugared – neither do chocolate drinkers. Remember there are two variables in HCs just as in faucets – I want to control them both! Is that too hard?
A Dog's Breakfast 