Those of us who appreciate quality coffee develop a sixth sense when we go into a restaurant.

Places with the word café in the name are usually good but to be sure check out the ambiance. Tables of students, people reading books or newspapers and snippets of conversations about politics and the theater indicate it is safe to relax and enjoy a latte.

Unless you have been been on the road since before the sun was up, restaurants on the side of a highway are not the best of places to order coffee. What is served up in those thick white mugs is a blackish beverage that comes in an industrial size can and run through a never been cleaned coffee machine and as the day wears on it becomes a combination of the 6am, 9am, 10:30 ………… leftovers.

Never assume that expensive restaurants will serve good coffee because they don’t. Chains defiantly don’t, I rarely get a good coffee at The Keg; perhaps their thinking is that by the time one has consumed all those keg sized drinks and a large slab of cow the customer wouldn’t even notice the quality. I notice. The last time I was there I ordered a Spanish coffee after dinner; it had the bitter taste of sitting for hours with liquor and cream added.

I may be one of only a handful of people in North America who DOES NOT LIKE TIM HORTONS COFFEE. It gives me both a stomach and head ache. We have not one but two Tim’s where I live, yea.

Needless to say my kitchen is a shrine to good coffee. I buy only whole beans that I would hand pick myself if I could. I grind them, add bottled water to my clean coffee maker, get out one of my favorite coffee mugs, add some fresh cream and experience something that is close to a caffeine orgasm.

One day I will buy an Italian espresso machine, the kind that costs a few thousand dollars. I will serve it’s hot fresh nectar in little white cups while friends gather to discuss avant-garde topics and how hard it is to find a good cup of coffee

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