today: 6.10.99
every day

i like a granita. i really do. a granita is served at coffee shops and it tastes a little like coffee but, brother, that ain't coffee!

i think i like a granita the most because i believe in my heart that baristas hate to serve them. baristas didn't really exist domestically until americans collectively decided that coffee was our favorite thing in the whole world and that, although coffee can be purchased at every health code-violating corner grocer or gas station mini-market, and is often given away for free at places that fix your muffler or transmission while you wait, coffee is a very fancy beverage. before we reached a consensus on the fancy nature of coffee (and its delightfully addictive powers. i am pleased that coffee, alongside chocolate, cigarettes, and bathtub speed has become yet another thing that office-drones and theater majors loudly insist they "need" in order to function daily), people who worked in coffee shops were called "people who work in coffee shops". now they are called -- and often demand to be called -- baristas. and there's nothing that gets a barista's apron in a knot more than a granita.

the granita is an insult to the craft of making fine coffee. it comes around when the sun pastes itself to our skin. upstaging the polished coffee urns and delicate espresso makers, the granita maker is a beverage funhouse. it looks like a giant slushie machine, usually with a clear window in the side to reveal a caramel-colored liquid doing continuous spin cycle flip-flops inside. and unlike an espresso machine, or milk steamer or what-have-you, the granita just has a single, simple monkey pump on the front. there are two speeds: ON and OFF. me, i prefer ON. cause i like a granita.

the granita itself is actually not unlike a coffee-flavored slushie (so its presentation actually makes a lot of sense). it's milk, water, sugar and lots of crushed ice and, if i'm not mistaken, a little bit of coffee, too. it's a little bit of this and little bit of that and it's ALL GOOD! it's a way of fooling yourself by disguising your dessert as a legitimate fancy beverage.

i think ordering a granita at a place employed by baristas is equivalent to asking a waiter at a japanese restaurant for a fork. yes, they usually have forks lying around somewhere, but they're never terribly pleased to honor that request.

i order granitas because i like granitas. i feel uncomfortable ordering granitas because, well, i feel uncomfortable doing just about everything (especially buying candy or lacy socks for little girls, both which i do more than i'd like to admit). and the only way i can relieve some of that discomfort is the knowledge that this barista -- this well-trained artisan singing along to the rhythm of the coffee shop's soundtrack cd (available for sale at the counter, next to those caramel-waffle sandwiches you're supposed to rest over your steaming coffee cup to let the sweet caramel get nice and melty and delicious) -- has to abandon all of his barista skills when he steps over to that big, ridiculous granita machine and pulls the lever to let out some of that thick, sweet junk. it is at that point that i am willing to accept that i am a granita-ordering boob in exchange for my barista accepting that sometimes it's ok to just be a person who works in a coffee shop.

man, i love a granita.

(p.s. my spellcheck red-flagged the word BARISTA, as if it doesn't exist. it did the same for granita, of course)

prequel | sequel

all these words © 1999 todd levin.