U kafic

I touched briefly on coffee the other day. Ordering a large coffee with milk was the first sort of full sentence that I said in Croatian – I used to practice it under my breath as the konobar came to take my order.

The whole café experience is different in NZ- I will try and take some photos to show you but in the mean time you will just have to follow the description.
Most cafes are inside rather than on a terasa – this is because our weather is not very dependable – there is a song that says that we have ‘four seasons in one day’ – so it can be hot, then rain, then be cold then hot again. Easier to not rely upon only outdoor seating, but cafes with a terrace or garden seating are more popular.

When you go into a café, you don’t go and sit down and wait to be served – you go to the counter and order what you want. And that’s the hard bit, because there are so many choices. Tea - black tea, white tea, green tea, green tea with raspberry, and then the full range of herbal teas. That’s ok for me, I don’t ever have tea in a cafe.

You can have … black coffee, short, long, espresso – you can have coffee with milk – full fat milk, trim milk, and then you can have soy milk if you have issues with cow’s milk. Then you can break that down further into a ‘flat white’, latte, cappuccino…. God, then they want to know if you if you want your latte in a glass or a bowl… oh, forgot to mention my choice on a day when I have already had a coffee or two – a soy chai latte. The coffee when you are not having a coffee. It isn’t too out of it to hear someone order a ‘trim milk decaffinated flat white’. A café is no place to be neodlucan!

Apart from the tea/coffee there are a plethora of cold drinks – pure fruit juice (juiced before your very eyes) or a smoothie (a mixture of fruit juice, bananas or other fruit to thicken it – add coconut milk or yoghurt, or wheatgerm grass (yes, we can be seriously health conscious) – or bottled juices. Or bottled water (a million flavours, take it with gas, without gas). Or stick to coke. Or milkshake. Or hot chocolate – with or without marshmallows…..

But apart from the staggering range of drinks, there is always food in our cafes – always. Maybe this is why we are a little bit more inclined to be overweight – pay for your soy chai latte and staring at you are maybe .. fresh raspberry and white chocolate muffins…

. Carrot cake (oh, you have to have the recipe for that perfect gem of a creation)… date and orange scones (now I’m hungry.. see?). And that’s what happens, as you stand there telling yourself that you only need a coffee, the taste buds are coming alive as you look at the ‘banoffe pie’ (banana and toffee). And besides that there are the savoury choices -

Panini with salami, French sticks with ham… fresh salads by the bowl.

Vegetarian pies. All fresh, all healthy and all beautifully presented in the cabinet in front of you. Do you see how hard it is if you are a person with no self control with your cash flow card at the ready????
There are so many cafes, all trying to be the most popular – so each one must try and offer something which puts it ahead of the others – so the choice widens and widens and then broadens…..

And one last cute thing – one of the local cafes near my house has a beautiful garden terasa with shell paving and olive trees- and because it can get cold, they have woolen blankets that they hand out to wrap around your shoulders, and huge gas heaters to ensure that people keep coming to sit in their café…. and they don’t go to the one across the road which has no garden seating….