Pish
I haven't frequented McDonalds or Starbucks for a few years for many reasons and I have to say that to even think that either of those establishments makes an authentic cup of coffee is a joke. I'm sorry but I feel strongly about that.
It's probably not widely known but long before England was a nation of tea drinkers we were in fact a nation of coffee drinkers. It could be said that we introduced coffee to the wider world in fact. Prior to the Empire we bought coffee back from Turkey and it was refered to as "Islamic wine", with records showing the first coffee shops opeing up in London in the 17th century. For those of you with an interest in this sort of thing there is an excellent book called "The Coffee House: A Social History" by Markham Ellis which makes for a suprisingly interesting read. This is a review from Amazon:
"This is a remarkable and persuasive account of the rise of a specific form of public sociality in 17th-century England: the coffee house, a seemingly unlikely blend of middle eastern and Protestant values, thrown into fruitful alliance by the presence of a stimulating beverage - 'the wine of Islam', as Markman Ellis characterises it - a drink that served to introduce the discipline of sober public discourse into a hitherto booze-sodden British life.
Coffee, the world's second-most traded commodity (after oil), provided the catalyst for a novel kind of mercantile wide-awake club which led, eventually, to marine insurance (through Lloyd's Coffee House) as well as to Starbucks and Coffee Rebublic, complete with their array of newspapers and magazines in imitation of their historical forebears. Ellis does a good job introducing the characters behind the rise of the coffee habit, as well as elucidating the various contested meanings of the drink itself, but he is particularly good at recreating the locations in which coffee was first consumed, and what the act of consumption meant to its earliest customers.
After reading this, your frothy latte will never taste quite the same again."
Cheers
Reachy
