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For years I’ve turned a blind eye to one question that upscale waiters and dinner party hosts ask almost every time you’re in their presence. It’s a question that for a long while, went in one ear and out the other. It was never something I considered. I was too naive to understand what it signified.
“Anyone care for some coffee?”
It’s a simple question. Coffee after dinner? You serious, Clark? How about rustling me up another ice cold beer from the back room? Another martini, maybe. But not a cup of coffee.
Outside of the obvious flushing effect that coffee brings, I just didn’t understand why anyone would want a cup of joe after a hearty meal. When I was still a young buck, the entire point of eating a meal was to get my stomach full.
The way I saw it was that if you drink a cup of coffee immediately following a steak with bleu cheese charred crust, asparagus, and garlic mashed, aren’t you sort of negating the entire thing? This attitude towards the cup of coffee after dinner prevented me from trying it for a long while.
Now that I’m 26 and mature beyond my years, I’ve come to embrace it. It’s utterly adult in every way. Sophistication abounds as you ask your host, waitress, or waiter for a cup of black with a dash of cream.
A little java after a big meal isn’t meant to be something that flushes you out. It’s a way to continue the party and also sober everyone up a little bit. Let’s just say for argument’s sake that you’re hitting the town after dinner adjourns. You want to be buzzed, sure, but you don’t really need another martini post-meal before you hit the bars downtown. You need a pick-me-up, and unless you’re planning on hitting the slopes so to speak, the most legal way to get that wired edge back is to order an industrial strength coffee from the kitchen.
It just so happens that many desserts pair exceptionally well with coffee. Chocolate cake and black coffee. Tiramisu and espresso. Cookies and cappuccino. I could do this all day. Whether it’s at a restaurant or a quaint dinner party, the ritual of having coffee after your meal creates a lingering effect.
And for most, let’s just be honest for a second. If you’re at an upscale restaurant eating tiramisu after a dinner or at a couple’s apartment munching on cookies with other couples, I don’t think the chances are great that you’re going to the bar after you leave.
You’re probably going home. But that doesn’t mean you don’t want to stay and hang out. This is human nature, after all. Nobody really wants a good dinner party to end. Everyone is yucking it up, more than likely discussing times of yore in college. For most people who decide they want one, the cup of coffee isn’t so much about getting wired for your next adventure as it is about trying to keep the party alive for another half hour or so.
At its crux, the coffee after dinner play is something that a person at any age can relate to. During a really good party, nobody wants it to end and at younger age there would people willing to go to extreme lengths to make sure that it doesn’t.
When you get older, the cup of coffee becomes a way to extend the good times just a little bit longer. It’s your last attempt at a joke that got interrupted by the waiter when everyone was ordering drinks at the beginning of the night. But more importantly it’s a way to spend more time with people that you’d like to see more of but for whatever reason don’t anymore.
The question -“Anyone care for some coffee?”- isn’t really about the coffee. It’s a mask, but it’s not a sinister one and it’s one that you should be answering in the affirmative to. The real question is this – “Anyone want to stay and hang out for just a little bit longer?”.
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jduda@grandex.co
Class, Johnny D. You’re growing up before our eyes.
I typically go with a decaf Espresso or Americano myself as there is typically enough residual caffeine from the lining of the machine to keep me going without staying up til 4am wondering if that waitress was indeed eye balling me or the large ketchup stain on my shirt.
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Caffeine after 5 on a weekday? Am I pulling an all-nighter or something?
Power Move: black coffee and vanilla ice cream, use a little of the ice cream as cream and sugar in your coffee.
Some of us like our coffee black though…
Espresso Martini is the move
Hit me with some Kom’, post dinner.
Pre, para or post dinner, there’s no bad time for some ‘bucha
Go for the espresso martini after dinner and you’ll never look back
Heck indeed
I like a digestif like a port or maybe some Baileys.
I drink coffee after dinner… but that’s because I work night shift. So. Otherwise I don’t get it.
I loooove this column!