Her hand twisted into a knife, then paused mid-air before stabbing down into the latte, piercing the heart of the tulip design carefully crafted just minutes before. Nowhere in my earlier lesson was I prepared for this level of destruction. What else could I do but laugh at the absurdity? She took great pleasure in bucking the norm of worshipping the latte artist, instead preferring to destroy what had taken thousands of repetitions and hundreds of hours to master.
Words by George Curtis.
I had been spending the day at Kaizen & Coffee, a small shop in San Mateo, CA. It was the summer of 2023, and I was just getting my feet wet in the world of coffee. The Kaizen team had kindly invited me to sample their latest coffee beans and upcoming toast-based food menu. I capped off the morning by going behind the bar and trying my hand at pulling shots and pouring latte art.
In their close-up demonstration before handing me the reins, I focused on the science: How long should it take to pull each shot? How long do I steam the milk? What angle should I hold the cup at when pouring? I needed a step-by-step recipe because I thought I could compensate for my lack of experience with attention to detail and memorization of prescribed steps. Even with the professional coaching, my latte art ended as a pale blob fading into the golden-brown liquid below. I couldn’t help but laugh at myself and crack a self-deprecating joke: “This is a Picasso,” referencing the childlike quality of Pablo Picasso’s later works.
Then the pros took their turn, and it was effortless, like they were born with the skill. The recipe was replaced by experience and feel. They could seemingly push the milk into any shape at will. The steps of the process were abstracted away and the art emerged.
And in this I realized the irony of my earlier joke: Picasso created more than 50,000 works over the course of his lifetime so that only a few hundred could live on forever. Picasso even said, “It took me four years to paint like Raphael, but a lifetime to paint like a child.”
After the queen of destruction took her turn and effortlessly poured the perfect tulip just kissing the brim of the cup, she instructed me to follow her. She carefully carried her latte as we went out the rear exit to the parking lot. I was told to start recording, and moments later, coffee was splashed everywhere, on body parts and blacktop alike.
In reflection, this moment perfectly captures the ephemeral nature of coffee. It takes up to four years for a coffee plant to mature and bear fruit, and another six months for the fruit to be ready for picking. Then the fruit is processed to reveal the seed within. This coffee makes its way to roasters around the world, where they stamp their brand of flavor onto the roasted product. These roasted beans then make their way to coffee shops like Kaizen & Coffee to be ground up and brewed into espresso. The barista takes this espresso and paints artwork in milk, only for it to be slurped down moments later, or worse, immediately covered with a to-go lid. Coffee is a work of art that takes an exorbitant amount of time and effort to produce such a brief moment of happiness, energy, or warmth in the consumer, or in rare cases, to be absolutely beaten to death in a San Mateo parking lot.
“Coffee is a work of art that takes an exorbitant amount of time and effort.”
The moment of enjoying coffee matters. It is art at the tail end of years of effort and experience, and in my opinion, an inseparable experience from the coffee shop itself, where all of the senses combine and amplify each other to create a tangible energy. It’s an experience that can’t be bottled up or taken home; it disappears like a flame suffocated of oxygen the moment a to-go lid is clicked into place. It can’t be captured on an Instagram Story either; it can only be felt in the moment and is best enjoyed in the cafe.
Unfortunately for you and me, this is often misunderstood. The loudest is not always the best, and complexity doesn’t necessarily signify expertise. These are common tricks meant to draw you in, large neon signs trying to blind you, yet we fall for them every single day.
As an example, Blank Street, which recently rebranded and dropped “coffee” from their name, has lines down the street at some Manhattan locations. I’ve often asked myself why: I’ve had their coffee. It objectively sucks. But then I realized: they don’t sell coffee, they sell aesthetic and lifestyle. They are the social media Starbucks, with neon signs and colorful matcha lattes, all designed to look good in your selfies and satisfy your sugar craving.
There is no art inside Blank Street, only snake oil. But again, our eyes are drawn to the shiny object, and Blank Street dominates because they communicate status and don’t give a shit about craft. This is noise mistaken for signal, the pursuit of fleeting social trends.
“Social media trends have turned the world’s most beautiful places into endless bathroom lines at a concert, where everyone waits for hours to take the same photo to show to people who couldn’t care less.” (x.com/@mamboitaliano_)
What these trends truly speak to, however, is our desire to relate to one another, to fit into the group, to sit at the cool table.
Another neon sign on the road to good coffee is the growth in popularity of the home espresso machine. The espresso machine was invented to spit out hundreds of consistent shots quickly and consistently in a busy urban commercial setting. You can take the machine out of the coffee shop, but you can’t bring the experience with you. Yet social media will absolutely try to convince you otherwise. Spray your beans with water, it’s called the Ross Droplet Technique. Buy the newest conical burr grinder for 0.05% more consistency, I swear it tastes way smoother. Oh, you haven’t heard of the Weiss Distribution Technique? You need to be stirring your ground coffee with this tool for even distribution. Don’t forget to dial in your espresso too. Common wisdom says it takes 4-6 shots per dial-in due to changes in humidity and temperature. Sure, this makes more sense when you can offset the cost over the course of a day with hundreds of customers, but now you should do it at home because you decided to buy an espresso machine. And you definitely need that new aesthetic glassware to show off your coffee.
“The barista takes this espresso and paints artwork in milk, only for it to be slurped down moments later, or worse, immediately covered with a to-go lid.”
You started with a desire to bring the cafe experience home, but you only brought home the headaches, complexity, and consumerism. Simply liking coffee doesn’t provide adequate cover here. You can like coffee and still brew the best-tasting cup at home for almost no money. So be honest with yourself: why exactly do you need all these things? In a world full of noise, it’s incredibly tempting to try to become louder yourself, but like adding another neon sign to the Vegas skyline, it’s all just pollution that stops you from seeing the stars.
The good news: finding the signal beyond the noise is still possible, if you know where to look.
It’s in the coffee shops that open slow bars for pour-overs, so you can immerse yourself in the sensory experience. It’s grabbing a chair outside a cafe with an espresso in hand to watch the city wake up. It’s the patient barista explaining to a customer that there is no such thing as an espresso bean. It’s quality-focused menus, unconcerned with flash or trend. It’s the symphony of clinking glasses, steam wands, conversation, and the bell above the door as people come and go. It’s the happiness of being present, without the fear of missing out or the need to LARP as an influencer.
I didn’t always see things so simply and plainly. It started out for me like it did for so many others. The discovery: wow, this coffee is really good, why does it taste like strawberry jam? You’re telling me this is black coffee? I want more, where do I get it? How do I make it? After countless online searches, tutorial videos, and pompous Reddit threads, I hit the checkout button to buy a fancy coffee grinder. I’m deep in it now. Months later, now a self-proclaimed know-it-all, I watch a new coffee grinder hit the market. This one is supposed to be better than the last; reviewers say it brings real clarity to the cup and magnifies the potential of light roasts. The World Brewers Cup Champion just used it in competition; surely it contributed to his success. This was just another version of the Picasso dilemma. It’s the long practice and repetition that created the winner, not the equipment. Even so, I had to buy it. There is no end for coffee gearheads because there is no end to our need to fit in and follow trends.
“My palate was evolving, leaving the noise of the internet for the quiet of reality. I had a taste of the signal coffee could offer and only wanted more.”
Years later, while visiting Barcelona, I sat inside Nomad Coffee. As always, with my back to the wall so I could face the action: the people, the baristas, the craft. By this time, I had it pretty much all figured out. You could drop me anywhere in the world and I would quickly find the best cafes in town. Nomad was all signal and no noise. Behind the counter was a very simple yet rich menu: filter coffee and espresso with options to choose origin and tasting notes, plus a few classic coffee beverages like espresso tonics and flat whites. There was no bubbling bath of cold brew, nor a batch brewer filled with coffee made hours before. Filter coffee was brewed in the pour-over style, by hand and to order. This was Nomad’s signal that craft and quality came above all else. Most shops won’t or can’t dedicate a barista to this one simple task.
My palate was evolving, leaving the noise of the internet for the quiet of reality. I had a taste of the signal coffee could offer and wanted more. I planned coffee crawls in New York, rescheduled flights out of Atlanta to for few extra coffee stops, and chose vacation spots based on the quality of the local coffee scene. In 2025, I planned a trip to Copenhagen to visit the April Coffee Store. I sat in their beautifully designed space for coffee service, listened to the barista describe the coffee, and smelled and slurped it until it was gone. It was one of the best coffee experiences I’ll ever have…
All of this is to say, you make the final choice…
Will you consume coffee, or will you enjoy it?
George is a coffee lover, homebrewer, and founder of cwic coffee, functional coffee for the endurance athlete. You can follow him on X @getcwic and on
Instagram @coffeewithcurtis.
This piece was first published in Issue 42 of the WARKITCHEN, explore the rest of the issue here. Enjoy the experience 🥂
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