Another Cup

Her name is Moon (like the moon, she says in Korean-accented English, pointing to the sky). I wandered in to her coffee shop when we were in the early stages of moving to Snohomish County and it was apparent that her store would be the closest source of non-corporate coffee to our new house. Neighborhood coffee shops are one of the few experiences I cling to desperately as we complete our flight away from Seattle and King County, and her business (Hot Shots Espresso) is one of the very few in our new surrounds where one can actually walk in and sit down. Not that it’s built for the sit-down coffee enthusiast – despite having an exterior deck and ample room inside, there’s a total of one old table inside with four chairs and two stools at the Formica counter. Located a stone’s throw from the shores of Martha Lake, Hot Shots reminds me of the resort stores in the lake town where I went to high school — somewhat dilapidated, with fading signs advertising specials no longer available, supplies stacked up in the corners, and security cameras dotting the ceiling. Everything cries out for attention and updating. It is a business that appears to run on the edge, where there is only time, energy and money for fundamental upkeep but not improvement.

On my first visit it appeared that she caters to what I call the novelty coffee crowd, who favor their brew imbued with flavored syrups and crowned with various and sundry toppings. Her menu board boasts a startling variety of convoluted coffee concoctions from Snickers and Red Bull Lattes to White Chocolate Mochas and other fabricated confections that seem more at home in a bakery than a coffee shop. I don’t begrudge anyone their sweetened drinks, I just prefer my coffee less sugar-encumbered. While the board does list an “extra shot” for fifty cents, nowhere does just it just say “drip coffee” or “espresso”, so I was skeptical from the get-go.

I think of myself not so much as a coffee snob, but more as a coffee enthusiast, albeit with preferences as I grow older. I worked construction in my teenage years and developed an affinity for large quantities of convenience store coffee and survived college largely on various brands of instant, so I am certainly not above the most pedestrian of brews. In my book, even bad coffee is still, well, coffee. But having had the good fortune of moving to the Pacific Northwest during the ascendancy of the artisan coffee movement and having been able to travel much of the world and be exposed to really, really, really good coffee, over time I have developed a certain quality bar and a predilection for espresso in the afternoon. I am quite capable of creating my preferred beverage at home (via an older Jura/Capresso Impressa E8 machine with illy dark roast for those scoring at home), but there is something about the sensuous environment of coffee shops. I love the intoxicating smells and the intriguing hissing and gurgling sounds of hot beverages being prepared, not to mention the convenience of having someone else make your coffee. There is also the fact that smaller home espresso machines, no matter how high the quality, simply cannot generate the water pressure that commercial machines can, which (along with the romantic fog of memory) is the predominate reason it’s essentially impossible to reproduce that amazing espresso you had on that trip to Tuscany.

My first test of any coffee shop is always a dual barometer of their product and their knowledge. I nonchalantly order a doppio like I have been speaking Italian my whole life. If they have no idea what I’m talking about, I apologize and clarify that I would like a double espresso (doppio being nothing more than Italian for “double”). My experience is that those working retail counters are often just punching the clock at a job and are not overly concerned with the subtleties of the industry in which they are employed. Having also spent time in food service, I don’t necessarily hold their ambivalence against them.

When I ask Moon for a doppio, she has no idea what I’m talking about. Assuming a potential gap in our understanding due to language differences (while noting that her relative command of English is certainly better than my handful of Korean words), I change my order to a double espresso. She still seems a bit confused, puzzled by my seeming lack of interest in the dozens of bottles of flavored syrups and powders that line her counter. Correct, I say — no milk, no syrup, no ice, no whipped cream, no cocoa sprinkles. Still shooting me a quizzical look, she turns to her large, red La Marzocco commercial espresso machine like a conductor facing an orchestra and sets about pulling my shot. Mounted to a sturdy bench perpendicular to her counter, the machine is nearly her equal in height, and she leans forward and plays it like a seasoned pro — grinding, measuring, leveling, tamping, locking, and brewing in swift, practiced movements.

Coffee is a dance between the mystical bean itself and everything that happens to it after being picked, integral to which are the quality of the initial product and the processes of harvest, transport, roasting, grinding, and brewing — including the skill of the operator for non-automated brewing. Over the years I’ve paid extravagant sums for imported, fair-trade co-op shade-grown beans craft-roasted then hand-ground and brewed in a pour-over using specially filtered water that ultimately I thought tasted like muddy crap, and I’ve had mass-brewed truck stop coffee to die for, so there is clearly a complicated connection between all the various parameters.

It’s impossible to know which of these many facets influenced the cup that Moon set in front of me, but the net result was mostly unappealing. While the texture and consistency were good (not too thick or too watery) and it had the rich, creamy layer of crema characteristic of commercial machines, something just tasted off. Not burned or anything, but it just didn’t have the nice bitter bite of a good espresso. I found no fault with her preparation, and therefore suspect that the quality of coffee may be the culprit – using lower quality beans to keep costs down in what must already be a low-margin operation. I reflected that it probably tasted just fine when inundated with other flavors and sugary substances, so in one sense she may simply know her market.

At this point I made what in retrospect strikes me as a curious choice. Perhaps sadly, it would not be unprecedented for me to roll my eyes and exit the establishment while complaining loudly about the quality. But on this day something made me stay. My best guess is that if this was my closest non-Starbucks coffee store, at some level I felt it deserved more than one shot, literally and figuratively. It was also a gray and rainy March day, and there are certainly worse ways to spend time on such days than pausing over of a shot or two of bad coffee. Further, as part of our newness and transition to this area we were consciously looking to make new connections, and this seemed like a splendid opportunity.

As Moon singlehandedly worked both the counter and the drive-through (as I’m discovering, there must be some sort of ordinance in Snohomish County that requires coffee joints to sport drive-throughs, and Hot Shots is no exception), we began a staccato conversation. Interspersed by attending to customers, and in sometimes halting English, we took our first steps beyond the regular airy shopkeeper/customer banter.

She has owned Hot Shots for the last 15 years. She actually used to own and run two different locations, but found it exhausting to split time between them. She also had a significant problem with theft by employees when she wasn’t on the premises – caught red-handed by the cameras in plain view. So she now prefers to operate one store full-time with the help of a single trusted employee during the busier summer season.

There is a quickness and a borderline abruptness to her diction, which combined with English not being her native tongue makes parts of our conversation difficult. Perhaps confused by my insistence on sitting and savoring my coffee, and looking at my causal clothing, she asks “Not working today?” in her rapid-fire manner of speaking. It’s a reasonable question, given that her establishment clearly isn’t set up for patrons to work (no Wi-Fi and the aforementioned lack of tables), and I appear to have time to loiter. I took it as an honest inquiry, phrased as best she could, and not as any sort of observational judgement. I explained that I now work from my home and was just taking a coffee break. I tried to expound further that since I didn’t have any meetings scheduled, I was in my “non-client” wardrobe of jeans and a tee-shirt, but the language gap precluded mutual comprehension of most of the supporting details. The additional upside of this portion of our exchange is that it gave me the most insight yet on the lack of sit-down coffee shops in this area – do only non-working people here have time to sit? It’s as practical an explanation as any other so far.

This veneer of abruptness manifests as a negative in her shop’s mixed internet reviews, but my take is that a hurried dash through a drive-up window doesn’t leave much room for deeper understanding. Having spent time in countries where I had a near-zero grasp of the local language, I know it’s entirely possible have a meaningful conversation composed of nothing more than smiles and awkward pantomime, but this takes time, patience, and willingness by both parties to try. I once spent over an hour in a small tea shop at the Lo Wu train station on Hong Kong’s northern border with a proprietor who spoke absolutely no English, and we had a magnificent time finding ways to communicate while tasting various teas. I also know it’s possible – easy, actually — to come off as unintentionally rude when trying to communicate in a language that is not yet your own. I have both compassion and deep respect for anyone that has come to this country and made sufficient linguistic inroads to run an entrepreneurial business.

After a little more back and forth, it becomes clear that I’ve actually caught her on a bad day. The son of a good friend of hers had been taken to a nearby hospital that morning after suffering a heart attack. He was only twenty-six years old, and was not expected to recover. Her own mother passed away just two months ago, and the feeling of loss is magnified with this latest news. I learn that she has a daughter, but her subsequent mention that with her mother’s passing all her remaining family lives in South Korea makes a curious omission of any current or former husband. Having lost my mother a few short years ago, we quickly find ourselves on common ground. But just as quickly the customer traffic picks up and she breaks off, wistful and preoccupied. Before leaving I surprise her by thanking her in Korean, which prompts at least a sliver of a smile.

In a previous career I had the opportunity to travel extensively, with an emphasis on the Asia-Pacific rim countries. These trips were always a combination of business and social, as my hosts were always eager to share of their country and culture. Over several trips to Seoul, I was repeatedly shown an important aspect of Korean culture — the preeminence of harmony and order. This is more than just everybody looking to get along with everybody else, it also surfaces in not trying to stand out or be highly individualized. I had one colleague illustrate this by pointing out the highway running near the office building in which we were meeting. He had me notice that there wasn’t a great variety of types of vehicles on the road, and nearly all were very utilitarian and painted some tone of blue, silver or beige. No flashy red or bright yellow sports cars. This concept applies to everything from art to architecture, and is most intimately expressed in the importance of family and community. They regard family as the basic social unit, and consider harmony at home the first step toward harmony in the community and ultimately in the nation as a whole.

I cannot imagine coming from a culture with such an emphasis on the connected family, and then being essentially alone and over five thousand miles from your nearest relatives. Yet here she is, on her personal version of the American frontier, working and scraping to make it happen. Even if we come from very different places and only cross paths in a small coffee shop many miles later, our current worlds are not so far apart. We both call this our neighborhood, but that’s just geography. Community is built by engaging and building relationships on an individual human-to-human level, and so despite any lingering qualms about the coffee, I’ll be back. Another cup. Another conversation. Another chance to connect.