Frita Batidos - a harrowing experience

Last night, on my way to do a bit of reading with Ryan at Sweetwater's Cafe on Washington St., I walked past Frita Batidos, a new Cuban-inspired restaurant opened by Eve Aronoff, who owns eve the restaurant. From the outside, you see big park benches on the inside (I should have taken this as my first clue), which are painted entirely white, to go along with the white walls. (In retrospect, it made the place seem super sterile.) When you walk inside, you notice oddly that in the far corners of the restaurant sugarcane hugs the walls. There seemed like a lot of options to order from, which you do at a counter. (I should have taken this as my second clue) On the menu were listed Cuban-inspired burgers, fries, shakes and coffee. It was a cold night, I tell you, and the sound of a thimble-sized shot of espresso sounded really good. They said that it was brewed with "demerara sugar," which I thought was intriguing. (It turns out that demerara sugar is just brown sugar. Talk about exotic advertising.) So, I order the thimble-sized coffee (which was $1.06), and I realised I had no cash. Crap...I paid for it by card, and got a receipt (trash!). But this is just the beginning of the ordeal. I walk to the side, where there is a fancy looking Mirage coffee machine, which surprised me, because (not to be judgemental) it didn't seem like anyone there was...into coffee. When I looked at the top of the machine, where baristas generally keep the mugs and espresso cups to warm, I notice only plastic and paper cups. OMG. (Here is a picture of the thimble. The mouth of it is a little bigger than a quarter. It seems that two thimbles would make one nice sized shot of espresso.)

Me: Are there any glass cups you can serve me in?
Girl: No, we just have these plastic thimbles.
Me: I just don't want to throw anything away. That's all.
Girl: Why not?
Me: I just don't like throwing stuff away...
Girl: Well, this is made of corn and is recyclable, or compostable, whatever.

Crap. She proceeds to open up a little packet of "demerara" sugar (a packet of Sugar in the Raw), and pours the sugar into the filter, and fill it with coffee grounds. I was surprised with the amount of coffee she put into the filter; it seemed like that was enough for two whole shots of espresso. She tries to fit the filter into the machine, and she can't. (It was just a little misaligned, that's all.) So she throws out all of the coffee and sugar. "Hmmph," she goes. She opens another packet of sugar in front of me (I'm flipping out inside) and puts in another bunch of freshly ground beans. She tries to fit the filter in, AND CAN'T! So she throws THAT sugar and coffee away too. "This stupid thing," she goes. She opens a third packet of sugar, fills the filter with beans, and finally gets the filter fixed into the machine. She puts a glass beaker under the mouth of the filter, and two whole shots of espresso come out, as expected! I am thinking, "Oh man, this isn't boding well." She takes the little thimble, fills it up, and throws the rest of the espresso, three thimbles worth down the drain! I was close to having a seizure.

The coffee in the thimble was gone in a second. It was good. But I was left with a receipt, a corn-based thimble, and take responsibility for three packets of sugar, and enough coffee for a small family.

Experiencing beauty, and the trash borne of it

Trash is borne out of, and is a byproduct of, our desire to control what we experience. Humans are the only animal species I can think of that want to control what happens to them. We build our homes such that air conditioning will keep the air temperature at 70 degrees Fahrenheit year round, we set our alarms to wake us up at predetermined times, and we cook food to our tastes. One consequence of this is that we've lost our abilities to cope with situations we were able to cope with in the past - living off of what we find, for example. But our ability to control what we experience has also led us to places where humans cannot survive, and yet are incredibly beautiful places - the depths of oceans, space, and the peaks of mountains. These places instill in us a sense of wonder and amazement, but to a degree only if someone knows about it, experiences it, and shares the experience. I didn't know about Bahamian blue holes until I read about them, but once I realised what they were, I thought they were beautiful, and it would be a wonderful experience to see them in person. Unfortunately, the only way we can control what we experience is to have something, a man-made product with us. Furthermore, these products, once they have served their purposes, become excess baggage on our voyages. What we do in the end is taint these pristine environments with our presence by leaving behind what is essentially trash.

For example, we have turned Mount Everest into the world's highest garbage dump. There are more than 100 tons of trash lying on Mount Everest. "The government of Nepal has taken steps toward protecting Mt. Everest. Thanks to a 1992 law, if climbers leave any nonbiodegradable trash such as plastic containers on the mountain, they lose a $4,000 pre-expedition deposit. A Sherpa incentive program, instituted in 1994, pays Sherpas for every discarded oxygen bottle they retrieve from the mountain. Glass bottles were banned on Everest in 1998."

But also think about the Clif bar you take on your trip into the woods, or the canister of propane you carry to make some soup while camping, or the band-aid you keep just in case you cut yourself rock-climbing. In our quest to observe beauty, we taint it.