The Potency of Café Cubano (Cuban Coffee)

Returning to my roots in Miami as I do for one month every summer gives me the opportunity to re-examine the things that are in absence of my life in France. For the first few days of what will ultimately be a brief stay, I am lured by the bright blue skies frequently interrupted by spurts of intense showers and decent Cuban cuisine. Amid the comestibles to re-discover, Cuban coffee is at the top of the list.

Being an avid coffee drinker, I'd like to believe that I have a good tolerance for caffeine. There have been times in which people have told me that they customarily stave from drinking any more of the liquid gold past four in the afternoon to prevent undergoing a sleepless night. I contemplate how I have never been able to understand this behavior as I drink my fourth cup of java at six o'clock in the evening.

I should mention that while I do have access to Cuban coffee while living in France, I ration myself to one cup of café con leche in the mornings and supply the rest of the intake with either soluble Nescafé or whatever is offered in the local bars in town. Be what it may, my resistance to caffeine is quite strong and don't have any issues going to bed at a decent time. 

Or so I thought.

On one fine afternoon, I sought shelter from the dense humidity seeping the Miami streets like a suffocating wool blanket and found myself glancing at a menu selling several drink varieties of café cubano. As the time was nearing 5:30 p.m., I reasoned that a café con leche would be too much to drink and that its smaller cousin, the cortadito, would hit the spot. True, while the volume of the cortadito seems puny in comparison to the run-of-the-mill Starbucks latte giants, its power lies in the sweetened espresso mixed with just the right amount of milk. 

I stared at the menu. I read the words "cortadito/colada." I made a mental note that when it would be my turn to place an order, I should say "cortadito" with conviction.

Cortadito, cortadito, cortadito. 

The person in front of me left the line. I stepped closer to the counter. The attendant asked me what I would like to order.

My mind thought "cortadito, cortadito, cortadito."

My mouth uttered "colada." 

In the haze of that silent chant, my mind didn't notice the mistake until I was handed a small cup filled with four shots of sweetened espresso. 

My brain screamed "WHAT THE HELL?! THIS ISN'T WHAT I HAD ORDERED!!! SHE GOT MY ORDER WRONG!!!" In the moment I was going to make my musings vocal, a little voice that had played the past few minutes in vivid succession recalled that, actually, yes, I had indeed ordered a colada, that I was too stupid to have not realized the error earlier and that it was now too late to backtrack and ask the poor attendant to make me another drink.

I forced a smile, paid for the drink then slumped away from the counter preparing myself to face the fate of drinking four sweetened shots of dark espresso. With the colada in hand, I imagined that this was what a walk to the gallows must have been like. I had resigned myself to facing severe heart palpitations and possibly never sleeping again.

Both the mind and mouth pleaded for me not to drink it. I drank it anyway.

At first, it seemed as if the colada's potency would have no effect on me. Yes, I felt more alert than I had been some moments before, but as far as I could tell, there was no perceivable difference as to how I would have felt had I downed a simple cortadito. I was duped into thinking that I was the caffeine-resistant champion of Java land.

I didn't go to sleep until 4:30 a.m.

Now I know why people here refer to the coffee as "Cuban Crack."

Barb the French Bean

Why I Hate George Clooney

[Before any George Clooney fans approach this post readily wielding pitchforks and lighted torches, I do have a plausible reason for hating him. Well, perhaps "hate" is too strong of a word. I think he did an excellent job in the film O Brother, Where Art Thou and he certainly still shows that he has some acting stamina left to do more action films (more recently, The American).

But Georgie-Porgie and I have a score to settle... ]

Back when I started teaching in Dijon, I learned a little too late that the French have had their vocabulary supplemented with the phrase "What Else?" This is thanks to the Nescafé/Nespresso commercials that Clooney endorses in rather amusing clips and posters at bus stops showing what looks like his passport with the catchphrase "What Else?"

Here was the commercial I repeatedly saw for the Nespresso Espresso Maker:


[EDIT: The video for the commercial was, for some reason, messed up. It featured Clooney appearing to escape from dying after he exchanged his Nespresso Maker to a John Malkovich "God." At the end, Clooney asks the question "What Else?"]

It's kinda funny, right? You'd think that I would be charmed by such a cleverly-done advertisement, particularly because it involves coffee and suggests that you could potentially have a "Get Out of Dying" card should you be able to trade something material after you get crushed by a piano and face the pearly gates.

WELL, I'M NOT LAUGHING.

Thanks to this campaign, the question of "What Else?" has created an impediment with my job of properly teaching English. I found that in the middle of my lessons, I would pose the question a few times and it would always result with my students chirping back an answer of "Nespresso."

In short, the French mind intercepts the phrase as follows:

Native English Speaker Unwittingly Asks "What Else?" = Opportunity for Us to Mock Native English Speaker


Got it?

You never know how many times you end up blurting those two words until French students start giggling and respond "Nescafé!" or "Nespresso!" in your face. For a teacher, not being able to ask this question is like having a kidney removed; it has really put a hitch in doing my job.

You would think that avoiding this combination of words would be simple enough, but it is not as easy as I would like to believe. The two monosyllabic words escape from my lips at crucial moments when I interrogate a student.

Ha, ha, ha. That joke gets old real fast.

Also: That'll be the day when French high schoolers do end up drinking Nescafé at a party instead of vins et bières.

After being stung by these predictable quips a good 5 or 6 times, I began to make conscious efforts to prevent myself from uttering "What Else?" in the middle of class. I thought that this phrase could easily be avoided if I kept repeating the mantra "I will not ask 'What Else?'" and concentrated my mental energy to purge this from my vocabulary.

I just hope that during my 4-month absence, the French have completely forgotten all about this advertising campaign and within two weeks I can go back to asking "What Else?" without any repercussions and qualms of embarrassment in front of my students. But I doubt that will be the case. A friend even offered a solution that I start asking "anything else" instead.

But the fact remains that I WANT TO KEEP MY "WHAT ELSE?"

Barb the French Bean

Disclaimer: I obviously do not own anything belonging to Nestlé, not the company name, not the commercial, not the question (which I want back). I honestly don't wish to beat George Clooney to a pulp.

Really. I don't.