Wednesday, July 21, 2004

7:51 PM | Cappuccino Attack!

There is this coffeeshop in the bottom of Lee Super Plaza -- Dumaguete's current (and only) shopping Goliath  -- where I go to when I'm itching for a cappuccino break.

 

Here in the bowels of the shopping center, only a coffee-bean's throw away from my cup of Tipsy Mocha (which costs P38.00, but today it tastes suspiciously sour), one finds the incessant hum of shoppers colliding with the stacks of groceries and the creaks of shopping carts and the shrill of shopgirls' voices.

 

This is Consumer Heaven: Lee Cimbali, which adjoins Breadworth to make a coffee-bread-pastry-sandwich retreat, tucked in an open corner of Lee's Supermarket. Somehow my tumbler of "coffee" affords me a keen sense of observation. This is what I see: the empty -- sometimes harried -- looks of matrons and teenagers counting change in the counters reflect a circus of money, and the impersonality of juice Tetrapacks, stainless steel cans, baked beans, baby formulas, packed meat, loose vegetables, batteries, and leaking ice cream. The sounds they make, however, drown my contented quiet as I sit by this elongated table (it is shaped like a large brown amoeba) on my precariously high chair. This table is so much better and so much more comfortable than the others, which are merely decorative barbells.

 

I adore drowning in the noise: it is in this sanctified disquiet that my brain truly works on an inspired speed. My fingers itch to write, and my senses become eager to devour a newspaper here, or a book there. There are other people here, too: people I see so many times in the same place that I suspect they are my secret sharers. I do not understand our penchant to busy, noisy commerce. Yet, I also remember my love affair with the corner spot of Scooby's Silliman where, between its floor-to-ceiling glass walls, one also sees an endless drama of people and traffic.

 

Writing about this fascination for coffee-while-sitting-and-staring-at-sidewalk-and-street-traffic once in another newspaper, I said: "How do you tell what a Dumagueteno really is? By her walk. By his stare. She commands the pace of a turtle, and he locks your look with a penetrating gaze that goes beyond polite -- essentially basic irritants for the uninitiated, who thinks of walking as a hurried exercise, and of staring as a social no-no. Why do you think Scooby's Silliman has become the success it is now? Besides its Internet cafe and iced tea, it is its big paned windows that have earned its place as Dumaguete's Fishbowl. From behind its comfortable observation perch, everybody can watch the world go by. 

 

"It is the small-town attitude that's basically the root of such behavior. Dumaguete may be a city and may be the capital of Negros Oriental, but a thin line separates it from the small town it was in its inception ... Why do we stare so? We stare because it's entertainment. With only one theater running in the city, there's nothing much to do really, except stare." 

 

This table in Lee Cimbali is my favorite spot now. I've been here three times today -- punctuating my visits to a nearby gym. Coffee culture has, of course, slowly embedded itself in the consciousness of many in this country. When I go to Cebu, Bo's (or Starbucks) is always a certified stopover from a night in Ratsky's. In Ayala, it's Oh George! And then there are those people I know who would come back from Manila on a visit and talk of Starbucks like they would a rock concert. An American comedian rightly put it when he talked of this growing fascination of cafe culture: "Starbucks is taking over the world." (And keeping everyone up late into the night.)

 

We embrace coffee culture the way we embrace fashion. It is fashionable, it is THE trend. Although it is a trend that is taking its time in Dumaguete. (I know a businessman in Dumaguete who once told me: "Why should I go to those cafes when I can get instant coffee at home?" A sure sign of a philistine, of course, but oh-so-typical for many in the city.) And does anybody even remember the sad demise of Silliman Ave. Cafe, which the habitues (like me) had once nicknamed SAC's? Today it is a massage parlor.

 

Nonetheless, coffee-drinking (and being seen doing that at the same time) is catching up on the rest of the population. To be seen sipping your menthe latte or your frappuccino after a late-night partying seems hip. (The coffee also helps keep awake the beer-laced mind, I suppose.) My friend Kristyn thinks it is tres French. Me, I just like coffee.

 

Cafe Memento, a few steps away from El Amigo, may have been the forerunner of the coffee culture in Dumaguete, although I should not really forget the regrettably forgettable Expresso. Memento still makes the best brewed coffee, I think (although the place has sadly gone to seed -- and those clueless waiters!). The bigger, trendier SAC's, for a while, had diverted everyone's attention. Remembering now: it was not so much the SAC's coffee that attracted me (although the caramel frappuccino was great), but the crepe. I swore by SAC's hazelnut crepe. I'll miss that hazelnut crepe! But SAC's is gone. In Don Atilano, meanwhile, the menthe latte is gratifying, and the iced coffee in Cafe Tropini, plus its view of the Boulevard, somehow make up for the fact that there's not much to order there that's different from nearby Chicco's or Le Chalet.

 

This morning in Lee Cimbali, while sipping Mocha Locca (P27.00), my friend Sally strolls in and gets her Black Forest Mocha (P37.00). "Hello," I say. 

 

"Hey, thought I'd find you here," Sally says. 

 

"How are you?" 

 

"Was here earlier, but I had to come back." 

 

"Really."

  

Sally sighs. Her mocha looks delicious. "There was this handsome guy who came in, ordered Black Forest Mocha, and sat two tables away, right there, right near the entrance." 

 

"Really." 

 

She sighs again. "Yes. He rather had a longish hair, beautifully unkempt, as if somebody's hands had ruffled those dark brown tresses. His frame was lean, and his clothes J. Crew-ish. Abercrombie & Fitch would have made him a twink." 

 

"Really." 

 

"But it was his sad eyes that arrested me. I always fall for men with sad eyes: this one had it in a huge erotic appeal. Even his lips were petulant and deliciously rebellious. And when he sipped his straw, it was the most beautiful thing I've seen since Jude Law took a dip in a bathtub in The Talented Mr. Ripley." 

 

"Really." 

 

"Yes, really." 

 

"And what happened next?" 

 

Sally sips again. "Sadly even coffee has to end -- gulped down. He went to the downstairs' hardware department, and I went out to lunch. It was the saddest parting."



We were coffee comrades, and we went back to watching the world go by.

[0] This is Where You Bite the Sandwich

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