handtomouth

As I watched the crema mount in waves of tiny bubbles from the bottom of the black liquid to float thick and dense on the top, I realised this was no ordinary coffee in front of me. The bar for good coffee in Cape Town has just been raised. Considerably.

Giovanni’s and Vida were the first to make coffee hip, streetwise and worth having an opinion on. The haircuts would argue their favourite style and debate whether any other shop could make the same quality, in the case of Vida whipping their loyalty card out to prove their caffeinated credentials. At the same time, the rise of the espresso machine across town is notable; it used to be rare to get an espresso at a restaurant, now it’s expected.

However, as any coffee addict worth his or her salt will know, there are many very ordinary shots being poured across town. Thin, lacking body, missing a crema. Or hard and bitter, over-extracted and harsh.

Do yourself a favour and visit Origin on Hudson Street in De Waterkant. They bring the beans in themselves, selected. They roast them, each according to its personality. You can do a comparative tasting of the beans, exploring the, yes, origin of the coffee – like you do with any product of provenance.

And the machine they use is state-of-the-art, a spaceship from a planet where coffee is always spelt with a capital C, or maybe never mentioned by name, so holy it is.