Roastin' n Bitchin'

[Roastin' n Bitchin']

Foxcroft and Ginger, Soho

There are two women sitting opposite me having a conversation about something amazingly corporate and dull. The phrases “Top level goal”, “company objectives” and “holistic company communications” has arisen, and I’m amazed these people can take themselves so seriously. I’m sure one day, I’ll end up in a dull job in HR for a data research company or something, and my judgment karma will come back to me and I’ll stumble upon my blog and realise that I never achieved my dreams or even the realistic ambitions and I’m exactly that person I was mocking and I’ll feel a perpetual ennui and disappointment in myself. So that’s fine. Fuck the establishment/hate the man etc.

I’ve been sitting in a coffee shop with a name that sounds like an artisan pillow shop for a large amount of time,  and have achieved remarkably little. I read eight pages of Women in Love, instagrammed two coffees, practiced some coding and had an awkward exchange with two men sitting on the end of my table. I also sent an email.

 

Even though my time here has been about as fruitless as all my Nordic coffee visits, I feel hugely more content in London than in Oslo. Even though, I really hate the corporate chat that I keep overhearing, in Oslo, I wouldn’t have even been able to understand what they were saying, and would have had to reserve my scorn for ice, or some cinnamon. 

The more I discover good coffee in London, the more my discovery in Oslo seems less fulfilling. I’ve narrowed down a soundbite about Oslo that I can repeat when people want to know how my year abroad went. “It was quite small and quite expensive”. If I like them, I might throw in a “You know, Oslo only has a million people, and compared to London, that’s nothing”, but generally they just nod and we continue with our riveting conversation. In good old British fashion, no one really wants to discuss a boring/lonely year abroad, they’d rather hear about a exciting one where you got a tan and went to Colombia and snorted cocaine without developing a habit or a poor relationship with other humans.

 

Foxcroft and Ginger is a coffee shop near Carnaby Street. Or Soho. Or Oxford Street. I’m not really sure where I am. The downstairs is frequented by people having meetings and people with specifically 13.3” MacBook Airs, and whilst the women opposite me are slowly killing my soul in burning corporate jargon, someone on another table just said “protagonist”, so it’s not all bad. The flat white was only £2 and quite nice but the milk could have been creamier. It also needed more foam than it had to be exactly a flat white.

 

It’s nice being back in London. I have spectacularly failed at doing anything even vaguely useful in the 4 months i’ve been here. I have barely read any of the books I need to read for next year. Here is a summary of Women in Love so far:

 

ursula do you want to get married

look at the poor people gudrun ew

gudrun what do you think of this man and do you think there’s anyway you’d be able to have an identity without his association?

 

It really does what it says on the tin. Apart from getting comfortable with not shaving my armpits (#grrlpower) the extent to which i’ve developed intellectually in any useful way is pretty low. Actually, i’ve become more well-versed in what cultural appropriation is, and i’m getting closer and closer to my life goal of being able to eat salad. 

 

I’ve decided to use Sexual Healing as a soundtrack to block out the inane chatter, except I can still hear them a little bit which makes this look like a very strange take on Marvin Gaye’s anthem of fucking, and that everyone might just start stripping and sucking pens with their company logos on.

[Roastin' n Bitchin']

Åpent Bakeri (Damplassen)

As I spread homemade strawberry jam across my scone, I come to contemplate many truths about my existence in Norway. What have I learned here? Why am I still here? When will it stop fucking snowing?

This kind of reflection is somewhat relevant considering I have returned to the coffee shop that birthed this idea for pseudo-coffee reviews and self-pitying introspection. In August, when I first came to Åpent Bakeri, it was sunny and warm, I was sitting outside, and I had friends. Now, I sit in the branch off Eventryveien, hidden away in a courtyard, alone, drinking coffee that I inadvertently over sweetened.

The coffee shops I often go to are trendy cafes filled with more people like me. Notably, in the collective desire to be interesting, we all end up having the same bag and mac book. This café, however, is more filled with the middle-aged-middle-classed white collective of Norwegians, who purchase loaves of bread for £5.50 and bring their screaming young nordletts in order to interrupt my delicate and important creative flow. Whilst being racially and financially exclusive, this shop is also hidden away without a sign, so one must be shown its location by a real life Norwegian person. Or I guess you could probably also Google it. I couldn’t really tell how nice the coffee was because it was too sweet, but the free homemade jam is like the sweet gooey physical manifestation of happiness.

To answer my previously stated rhetorical questions: I have learned that I don’t like being on my own. Except I’ve always known that. I have learned the location of this bakery. I have learned that snow is cool for about four days and then it’s really annoying especially when it betrays you and you slip on it even though all you’ve ever shown it was love and affection and is it too hard to ask for that back? Is it?

I am still here because I have to be, because I have no choice. I get free money from the EU, though, so that’s fun.

 

Later that day

What kind of coffee shop closes at four? A SHIT ONE that’s what. Luckily for me, I have a Nespresso® machine. I have unintentionally come to acquire a bright pink one - I am female ergo coffee machine must be pink or ovaries will implode. Anyway, who needs to leave the house when you have a Nespresso® machine? Not me! Except for when I need food, or have to go to uni, or want to experience what daylight feels like.

 

 I have gone for ‘Roma’ (strength 8) for my espresso this evening. I also found this neat little espresso cup without handles! Handles are so superfluous on hot drink holders.

 At least at home I can play music really loudly and pretend like the Percy Pig sweets I bought back from London are my friends.

Oh Percy! You’re so funny!

 No you can’t say that about black people. Because you can’t.

 Percy I think you’ve had enough of that gin.

I should get out more.

[Roastin' n Bitchin']

Coffee in the Kitchen, Saint Petersburg (кафе на кухне)

For no apparent reason, I have to come to Russia to review coffee. I mean, there is a reason, and it’s not to drink coffee. I’m visiting a friend. The visa was a monumental pain in the arseski to get, but the cheese cake I am currently consuming is acting as small recompense. Considering shepherding an English friend around Russia who can only say ‘yes’, ‘what’ and ‘donut’ is probably rather frustrating after a while,  I have been left to my own creative devices. In a coffee shop. In Saint Petersburg.

I feel conflicted visiting Russia, especially considering the anti-LGBT ‘propaganda’ law they’ve just passed. In the smallest way possible, I have decided to say ‘fuck you Putin’ by doing the reading for my ‘Homotextuality: Gay and Lesbian Literature’ in here. I’m also reading an article on Trans parents struggling to raise their children against the societal urge for gender normativity. If anyone’s going to liberate the gays in Russia, it’s almost certainly possibly me.

The coffee shop is clearly attempting to manufacture a cool western ambience, mixed with a kind of dank russian interior. It would be doing a slightly better job at being cool if they weren’t just playing offensively bad music. 70s disco seems to be the current genre. As always, there is an adequate amount of exposed brick. I’m impressed by their coffee paraphernalia, they have Hario coffee presses and kettles, which, if avoiding doing work in Norwegian coffee shops has taught me anything, they are the key to appear coffee literate. I am in no way prepared to try and ask for anything more extravagant than a filter coffee, as ‘yes thank you what donut’ doesn’t quite convey my particular desire to know about their interest in coffee. I have an overwhelming feeling that they want to ask me to leave as i’ve been sitting here for 3 hours now, but are unsure how exactly to overcome the language barrier. They keep hovering near me, cleaning up an imaginary mess and looking for the sixth time if there are any more cups to pick up, even though, like 5 minutes ago, there’s still no one here.

Oh, but they’ve redeemed themselves slightly with Hues Corporation ‘Rock the Boat’, which is an absolute choon.

Russia is strange. Everyone seems angry. The incongruity of the pastel coloured buildings only work to accentuate the depressing nature of the place, as they sit awkwardly below grey skies and contain blank faced russians. I feel ready to have an argument with anyone - particularly the suspiciously small russia grannies who just cannot understand the concept of letting people off the tube before you get on. No one gets to break that rule, not even you, tiny woman. When getting some money out a couple of days ago, a hidden russian voice said ‘Speak some fucking Russian, you’re in Russia’. When the two highly educated Old Etonians replied in almost perfect russian, the man resorted to shouting profanities, in really the only way one could when undermined by the proficiencies of the British public school system. We’re still unsure as to where the voice came from.

I do like it here though. The grit gives it character, and it’s a nice break from totally vanilla everyone-is-rich-and-equal-and-happy-Norway.

Aaaaaand, with a 4 minute saxophone solo track and ‘More More More (How Do You Like It?)’ we’re plunged back into the abyss of terrible terrible music. So close. 

[Roastin' n Bitchin']

Supreme Roastworks, Oslo

 

With most of my blog posts, being a bit of a dick proves for a successful way to draw humour out of what is essentially a rather humourless subject. Unfortunately, good will and a rustic interior have penetrated my cynical sardonic demeanour. I am too overwhelmingly struck by the lovely nature of Supreme Roastworks, a coffee shop in Grünerløkka, to be a dick.

I do hate it when kindness stops me from hating the world.

 ‘So how long does the extraction take?’

‘I usually stop pouring water at around 3.07’

‘Oh, I usually stop around the 2.50 mark’

‘Oh well, you use more coffee than me, around 18g per 300ml – at a course ground, yes?’

See? This is exactly the kind of self-righteous coffee conversation I should be mocking! What does it even mean? But I just can’t. They gave us butter from Trondheim to put on the rosinboller. They told me my coffee was ‘soft and fruity’ before I even asked. I just want to be their friend.

I think it’s the exposed brick. There is really nothing that softens my hard exterior like a good ol’ fashioned exposed brick interior. They roast their own coffee beans here, and at some point I will forego essential financial purchases in order to buy a packet of their coffee beans. The smell is luxurious, and this place is full of coffee aficionados, who, unlike me, know what they’re talking about.  In here, they weigh shit, pour shit, grind shit, and roast shit. And yet, I still don’t hate them.

Something that is quite notable about this place is the silence. Every single coffee place I’ve been to has either been playing music, or had a large number of bustling Norwegians chatting in their silly silly language. But here it’s just very quiet. It is popular, yet the people sitting here seem to assume a respectful silence to the almost religious process that is the coffee making. It seems that I am the only one disrespectful enough to have an ulterior motive other than just drinking coffee.

Right, and as I just wrote that the barista just put on a record player. So whilst they just undermined my previous analysis, it’s a fucking record player, so I forgive them. In other news, the man next to me is eating what I can make out to be a strawberry and brie sandwich. There are some great beards in here.

In a final masochistic splurge of money, I just ordered another coffee and some sort of brownie/coconut hybrid. The second man to the left of me ‘couldn’t help noticing that my laptop was dusty’, handed me a screen cleaner, and implored me to clean my dirty mac book (?). I guess this is the kind of ‘banter’ to expect from people who sit in a coffee bar for 4 hours, with nothing better to do.  They’re actually closing in about 2 minutes, but the barista is allowing me to ‘just sit here and relax until [I’m] finished’. This coffee used beans from Ethiopia, as opposed to my last coffee, which was from Panama. I keep smelling my coffee, partly to look like a professional, but also because there’s a really distinctive smell that I just can’t quite work out.

I feel like I’m part of a selected group of coffee drinkers (with strawberry brie man and clean-your-fucking-screen man), allowed to stay past closing hours, sitting here, silently, smelling coffee like we don’t have things to do, or a 5000 word Paradise Lost essay to write. Man with beard is also here. I don’t think they really like me, but either way I feel part of the gang.

Strawberry. It’s strawberry. The coffee smells like strawberry.

http://www.supremeroastworks.no/

[Roastin' n Bitchin']

Fuglen, Oslo

I am angry. I am often angry, aimlessly, but today I have a reason. On my journey to Fuglen, a coffee shop in downtown Oslo, I was stopped on the T-bane by transport regulators. Fine, it’s happened before, I just show them some semblance of a student card to justify my slightly cheaper ticket, and on they go, on the prowl to charge some poor ragamuffin without a travel card. However, the regulator I encountered today impressively simultaneously embodied both genitalia pejoratives: he was both a pulsating cock, and a massive cunt.

‘That’s not the right student card’

‘…Well I don’t have another one’

‘Well that’s not the right one’

This pointless conversation continued for about five minutes, with the occasional ‘blah blah blah inconsequential bullshit I’m insecure about my level of power and penis size blah’ until my passive aggression became just plain aggression. He didn’t do anything, and I just ambled off with my ID with a large desire to kill something when I’d reached my stop. Luckily, the coffee shop I’m now in is playing some top chilled indie choons, and I’m reclining on a sofa (oh how I’ve missed you sofas!) so my anger is dissipating somewhat. Nothing like an acoustic version of ‘Life of Mars’ in some indistinguishable foreign language to convince you that the world isn’t full of shits.

Fuglen is kitsch. There is a man to the left of me in tortoise shell glasses is huffing continuously at his MacBook air. I think he’s writing a novel. There are three beige coats of varying beige-ness flung dismissively on the mahogany table besides me. My friend and I have been disputing whether this particular red lamp is a jaguar or a naked mole rat. We are still undecided.

The coffee here is actually really delicious. I bought an americano that was wonderfully rich, and now I am drinking a giant filter coffee like there’s no tomorrow (because, obviously, if an apocalypse were to occur, my first thought would be ‘quick! To the Nordic coffee house!’). It’s very strong. Apparently there are competitions for people who can do the coffee good, and this place has a lot of the winners of the doing-coffee-good competitions. They get there beans from a variety of Oslo roasteries (Supreme Roastworks, Tim Wendelboe, Kaffa and Solberg & Hansen) and chose their roast based on the season. Consequently, my coffee tastes like bright autumnal skies and and rising seasonal depression. Delish.

Since the café was opened in the 1960s, they’ve maintained a kind of 50s/60s vibe with the interior. Sitting here, it feels like I’ve been transported back in time to when women, black people and homosexuals were oppressed. But hey, they have cool jukeboxes so silver lining yeah. The café is notable for it’s décor, and a person tells me on the internet that it supposedly has won ‘exceedingly rate accolade’ for good walls and stuff.  They’ve kept the original design from 1963, so technically the civil rights movement is peaking and sexual liberation is well on its way but I still feel subordinated by the coffee table in front of me.

The man to the left of me just got out a spirit level so maybe actually he’s a graphic designer or something. Cool. I took a photo of him as subtly as possible. I think he noticed, but just doesn’t give a fuck.

Da website:  www.fuglen.no

[Roastin' n Bitchin']

The aforementioned coffee grinder.

[Roastin' n Bitchin']

Kafe Liebling, Oslo

If I could somehow transform off-beat independent soft drinks and decaying old fashioned furniture into words, then there would really be no need for me to write this blog. I’d be walking around the coffee shops of Oslo, slowly feeding kitsch bobbing-head dogs and lamps shaped like mushrooms into this metaphysical transformer and BAM an article would be born, full of insightful coffee knowledge – witty, yet not intolerable. Unfortunately for you, and my Hamlet essay, that’s impossible. Obviously.

Grünerløkka is Oslo’s equivalent to the Shoreditch/Brick Lane area of London. Also in the east, it started off pretty poor and had a large immigrant community, and then for some reason or other someone opened a hipster bar/designer camera shop and it became unbearably cool. I don’t come here often – seeing as it doesn’t have a tube stop and I am an amateur neurotic 20 year old traveller (tourist) – I am far too terrified to venture anywhere beyond the designated T-Bane map. I did come here once though, for a night out on my second evening in Oslo, during my pre-beer-drinking days, but I’m back again, today, to Kafe Liebling, to annoy more coffee shop owners by buying one drink every four hours.

 

The barista is wearing sunglasses inside, which I take to be a sure sign of high quality coffee. Whilst they take fucking ages to make each coffee, they do deliver it to your seat, which is totally inefficient for a coffee shop but hey, kind of endearing. I purchased an Americano, as yesterday I spent £10 on a vintage coffee grinder, and way more than that on tickets to James Blake, so it was imperative that I remained frugal on this coffee excursion.

(You know Oslo is expensive, Ruby. You don’t need another pastel coloured jumper, Ruby.)

The coffee was nice. I refrained from putting sugar in it. It had a hint of liquorice and lemon, which sounds like a horrible combination for coffee. They get their beans from a place called ‘Supreme Roastworks’ which started off as a coffee roasting shop thing and has recently become a coffee selling shop thing, and is also situated in Grünerløkka. They make coffee with names like ‘Earth’ and ‘Yirgacheffe’. I am assured by my lovely, tolerant Norwegian friend that she will take me there next week (she somehow suppresses an audible sigh when I ask her for the eighth time how to order coffee in Norwegian). Here, they take those beans and mix them, which may explain the strange mixture of flavours.

 

The ‘authentic’/‘rustic’ nature of Kafe Liebling is somewhat undermined by the tiny shop within it, where they sell the kind of things you’d find in Urban Outfitters, i.e. the pseudo-vintage-collection-of-unnecessary-items. It’s just one more place that wants to charge you £188 for a raincoat, and as much as I would like a weirdly shaped yellow raincoat, I am just not going to buy that. Nor am I going to spend £7 on some ‘Gangsta style’ tattoos, or a candle shaped like a fried egg. I find it all a little despicable, because it’s coercive and unnecessarily expensive, and they know that.

Actually I totally revoke everything I just said, just found out they make homemade ice lollies and I think that’s wonderful.  

[Roastin' n Bitchin']

Litteratur Huset, Oslo

As a literature student, it is imperative that I satisfy my ego and spend all my time in appropriately literary settings.  Recently, I’ve taken to using books in all areas of my life in order to fully immerse myself in my discipline. Today I used a book as a bookmark for a larger book, and yesterday I discovered nothing quite dries your tears like the pages of Patricia Highsmith’s The Price of Salt. Perhaps one day I’ll just become a book.

Appropriately, this review comes from Oslo’s Litteratur Huset – ‘The House of Literature’ – a place used to make rich Norwegians feel cultured before they spend £25 on an aperitif. Litteratur Huset can be found 20 seconds from Åpent Bakery, off Parkveien, so whilst these coffee reviews so far are wildly informative, riveting and didactic, they are also somewhat geographically limited.  When I arrived here, there was a man with a dog that had what looked like a scrunchie in its hair. I tried to inconspicuously take a photo.

 

Litteratur Huset is not strictly a coffee house as you can dine, purchase books and attend talks here, but it makes coffee, so I guess it kindof counts. The bookshop sells a large enough variety of Moleskines to satisfy any middle class desire, and has one of those ladder things in case you want a book really high up, even though obviously, you’d never use it. The social pressure ended up being too heavy and I accidently spend £27 in the shop. I got In the Wake, a Norwegian book by Per Petterson, Zadie Smith’s NW (which takes a lot of courage to admit publicly I still haven’t read), and two old postcards, one that I thought might be sexist. I probably won’t have time to read either until Christmas where I could have just bought them in England, but this way when people look at me and see two books next to me, they’ll think I’m clever.

 

I came here last week for a talk with the Literature Editor of The New Yorker, Cressida Leyshon, and actually ended up having a beer with her briefly afterwards, as the friend I came with knew her from University. As the conversation passed and topics were broached, I considered subtly and charismatically easing the subject of work experience in.

‘So are you studying here on your year abroad?’

‘PLEASE LET ME WORK FOR YOU’.

Suffice to say, the opportunity never arose, and I continue to be poor and unemployed, spending my student loan week after week on books and coffee. Did someone say coffee? I drank a coffee today. It was smoky and tasted much like coffee tends to taste. I briefly considered drinking it black, but then I wimped out and made it really milky and sweet. After that, it tasted really nice. Norwegians serve coffee in tea cups, which I find it really uncomfortable and wrong.

The weather is beautiful here in Oslo, so I’m sitting outside, enviously observing edgy twenty somethings drink white wine. I think I might get a beer.

[Roastin' n Bitchin']

Åpent Bakery, Oslo

I sit in a cobblestone courtyard, overlooking the Royal Park in Oslo. The people on the table behind me are talking about what artisan bakery is best to purchase their bread from. I have my MacBook out on a table with a look of intense concentration - a tortured creative soul, straining to translate my intense emotional struggle and ennui to the linear, limited format of language? Is that a tear? Maybe I’m writing a novel.

 Actually, I’m writing a coffee blog. Somewhat a flawed idea, considering I sugar the fuck out of my coffee, so I’m not sure I really know what it actually tastes like. However, I have been drinking coffee since I was 13, and whilst I didn’t get into beer or wine until about 2 months ago, I’ve always enjoyed the almost bluntly rich taste of the beverage. Many drink coffee for the functional benefit of feeling more awake but this frustrates me: I would like to sit and drink cup after cup, without feeling like I’m slowly vibrating a cheap Nokia phone inside my mind.

 

I should be reading The Merchant of Venice yet Shakespeare’s borderline anti-Semitic works cannot seem to draw me away from the allure of spending 2 hours writing about a hot drink. My first caffeine-fueled excursion of choice is Åpent Bakery, a self-consciously trendy café cum-bakery that seems to be frequented by the young, beautiful and baby/dog owning Norwegian (both babies and dogs look expensive). Apple products are common. People seem to fulfill two moods: happy, or pensive.

I originally chose an Americano, but I drank it too quickly to analyse it, and now retrospectively my only impression of it was ‘coffee-ish’ so I’ve purchased an espresso (sans sugar) and a raisin bun (rosinboller). The espresso is soft and easily drinkable without sugar, though I suppose this is no surprise considering the Norwegians are renown for their lightly roasted coffee. Initially it feels slightly watered down, an unusual sensation for the bold, bitter taste of an espresso. The raisin bun is relatively underwhelming. Not too sweet with a nice undertone of tea, but…ya know, a raisin bun. 

 

 Overall, it is the atmosphere of the place that is most rewarding. It’s like an aesthetic circle jerk: you sit here and look cool, and then other people sit down and look equally cool, and we all feel cool and wonderful and sexy together. This intangible achievement is really how to succeed with a coffee chain, I want to be here because it makes me feel relaxed and trendy, and so in order to achieve that I buy their coffee and I sit. It appeals to my vanity, my desire to be cool. A trait humanity will probably always be plagued with, and will therefore never fail to sell more coffee.

Well done, Åpent Bakery, I may have spent about £8 on somewhat average coffee, but at least I feel fucking cool.