It’s difficult to maintain the illusion that I’m a dominant alphamale when I have such a girly-looking drink in front of me. Next time, I’m requesting a cup with skulls, dinosaurs, and big rockets. With a biscotti the shape of a medieval saber.

Previously on Cut & Taste

• Coffee Art
• I Heart Coffee

Lemon poppy cupcake with raspberry buttercream. Double-shot Americano. From Crema Bakery & Cafe in southeast Portland, Oregon.

The cafe

I love the layout of this cafe. Big, open, lots of windows and lots of hardwood.

The coffee

Their regular house coffee is from a french press. So it’s very strong. In fact, they provide hot water, right next to the coffee dispenser. Puny, weak mortals use this water to wuss-ify their drink. Can’t handle a french press? Get in the hot water line — with the other small-boned children.

The characters

A very intense guy started talking to me about how his ex-girlfriend was trying to kill him. That was the first thing he said to me.

After 2 minutes of him ironically ranting about crazy women, I tried to feign sudden hearing loss. I became engrossed in whatever was on my laptop screen and prayed for the girl sitting on the other side of me to bail me out. No luck. The guy topped off his one-sided conversation by inviting me to “team up” with him and fight strangers.

I had to decline, for I was in Portland on vacation and had to fly back home immediately. But after all this, for reasons beyond understanding, I moved to Portland... And no, it wasn’t to team up and fight strangers.

The view from above. Farley’s East in Oakland, CA.

All cause of Gregory’s Gourmet Desserts in Oakland, California. They’re open to the public one day a week: Wednesdays at 11:00AM (They close when they sell out.) Gregory’s is first & foremost a wholesale bakery, catering to hotels & restaurants. But due to public demand, they decided to open their doors to common streetwalkers — one day a week.

Ambiance

Their priority still lies with their corporate clients: They don’t have a “store-front” for the public. No fancy glass cases to show off their sweets like expensive jewelry. You basically walk down some stairs to a back room of the kitchen where they sell you cookies right off the baking trays.

No fancy printed menu behind the cash register (no cash register, either.) Instead, you walk by a human-sized dry-erase whiteboard just outside the door, filled from edge-to-edge with a huge list of cookies, cakes & cobblers. It’s not even pretty handwriting. It looks like I wrote it — And if you’ve ever had the misfortune of getting something handwritten from me, you know how shocking that is.

Fuck it. They don’t make menus, they make desserts. And you want ‘em.

My findings

• Key lime pie
• Peach cobbler
• 3 dark chocolate coffee cookies
• White chocolate blueberry oatmeal cookie. Tons of blueberry flavor. This is coming from a guy who’s still recovering from a cold.
• Peanut butter chocolate chip cookie
• Snickerdoodle

All for me.

Jina Bolton just posted this photo I took on her new site, Art in my coffee! If you want to see how it’s done, watch this video of a barista in action. And just think of all the times their parents told them to stop playing with their food.

Eggs benedict: 3 poached eggs, smoked salmon, Hollandaise & caviar on top of an English muffin. Country potatoes. Fresh coffee.

Done.

• chris: I just paid $26 for eggs
• brian: Knowing you, it probably came with a side of fish from outer space. “Can you make sure the fish was orbiting a moon of Jupiter?”

Here are all the ingredients you need: Americano. No sugar. Egg. Apple. Water. Repeat.

Now that the project I’m working on is out (we relaunched QN5 Music, an independent hip-hop record label), I think it’s a good time to start curbing my americano addiction. I’m trying to wean myself down to one per day for now. I’ll let you know when I fail.

Previously on Cut & Taste

• Breakfast, no bed
• I heart coffee

I gave up caffeine for about a year, but now I rarely go a day without a cup of coffee. The best way to describe the extent of my addiction: 3 workers at my regular coffee stop know me & my usual order. And they all work different shifts.

Previously on Cut & Taste

The difference between caffeine & cocaine: Caffiend

My resolve to cut out caffeine lasted about a year, but now I’m back in the game — again.

It’s a helluva drug

New York Magazine has published an interesting piece on the differences between caffeine & it’s not-so-distant cousin, cocaine:

Cocaine and amphetamines essentially do the same thing, only they create not just a pleasant feeling but outright euphoria [...] But the higher a drug’s highs, the lower its lows, which is why a crack user needing a fix might rob an elderly neighbor at gunpoint while a coffee drinker might simply get snippy with co-workers.

Full article: The Coffee Junkie’s Guide to Caffeine Addiction

It’s 2PM and this cafe is packed. They have a huge space with tons of tables, benches & couches and almost every seat in the house is taken. Every power outlet within sitting distance is occupied. I thought I was the only one who had nothing better to do in the afternoon. What are all these people doing here at this time of day? Don’t they have jobs to work and life goals to accomplish? Damn hippies!

Ana is talking with me on AIM. She stepped away to tend to her daughter for a moment, but when she came back, she said, “That was the biggest PP diaper I’ve seen in my LIFE! The diaper was pleading, ‘No more pp please…’”

My response:

You’d think this would deter me from drinking my latte… BUT NO!