I hope you're having a nice week. #Tcsp #106 is about glassware items and how they affect our coffee experience 😁 For me, this question totally makes sense ❤️

For me, who doesn't usually visit fancy cafes and who almost always orders an espresso or an Americano, the chances of seeing some peculiar piece of glassware on my table are really slim.

My mood is highly visual. I'm that kind of crazy person who has to clean and organize their space before they start reading, studying, or working on the computer; the same happens to me if I want to sew, cook, or do any other activity at home. When I'm not home, I try not to have a hard time.

I can't control the order of things outside my place, so I try to go to cafes that are pleasing to my eye.

In my city, the nicest glassware is usually part of the decor when it comes to coffee shops; they'll probably never serve you coffee in a rare, spectacular cup. If such a cup exists in that particular cafe you're visiting, the odds of it being exclusively part of the décor range from high to 100%. Dear customer, you're special to us, but please see without touching. Thank you.

Even when I'm in the mood to merge dessert and coffee and order an affogato, the most peculiar thing I've come to see land on my table is this little glass measuring jug in which the waitress brought the espresso for my ice cream 👇

Being a regular espresso drinker

hasn't helped my chances of seeing spectacular glassware on my table, but you can still get lucky and see some nice and quirky pieces, like these I saw a week ago at Panadería La Principal in Lechería. BUT._

...not on your table, haha.

Most probable thing, they're decorative items.

I liked this one very much 👇 It has a European granny feel to it that made my espresso taste so much better even though I was drinking it from a regular white ceramic cup.

This other one 👇 makes me think of a minstrel who tells me ancient stories with his lute, or of a scene of love that only exists in the steam that makes fantasies, a warm, aromatic ghostly mist like the one flying from inside my espresso, painting arabesques in the air.

Oh, flattened, colorful cups with tiny legs. Are they standing or sitting? Where do they go when we're not looking?

All these details and imaginations of mine made my breakfast and coffee taste better that morning when my spirits were not very high.

White ceramic on our tables. Well, it felt nice. I could content myself--I always do when I visit this bakery--with looking at the pretty dreamy pieces on the shelves next to my table, even if I'm not allowed to touch them, let alone use them.

Now, look at this other example of see but never touch 👇

I had a cappuccino here at Mocca Coffee Bistro a couple of days ago. Upon entering the place, just seeing how high up the pretty glass cups were made it clear that they were out of reach in both the literal and figurative sense, hehe. Although it's likely that these cups are used for orders other than the usual ones and therefore aren't so readily available.

There is a mental image that has stayed with me from my one and only visit to this cafe where the cafe attendant rides a librarian's ladder to reach a cup for a frappuccino. She moves awkwardly to climb up, while wedging her heels into the ladder rungs, and then she juggles to get down without breaking the glass cup 😆😏

They did serve me that weak cappuccino in a nice glass cup; it did help to make the coffee experience more likable.

All in All

A nice cup plays its role best if they let you drink from it. Of course, there are antique, collectible, or other very expensive cups that as a customer I wouldn't want to have in my hands; the fear of breaking them would not let me enjoy my coffee peacefully. But I do think that the coffee experience is nourished by all of our senses. When I go to have my hands and feet done, the girls give me coffee/tea in nice, distinctive cups and I can tell you I enjoy the experience a lot even if the coffee was not so good that day--which rarely happens, btw.

I hope that every day you visit a café,

you have the chance
to enjoy your coffee in an exceptionally distinctive mug 😁

Thank you so much for your visit :)

Banner by Hive account@andresromero 🖤