Edward
Bartender
- Messages
- 25,081
- Location
- London, UK
For those who remember, the last 100 years or so, "craft cocktails" have been chic. As a young boy, we went to places like Tonga Room and Trader Vic's for colorful drinks with paper umbrellas.. There were "fern bars" like Henry Africa's. T.G.I. Friday's had a special menu of special cocktails - every bar was stocked with fresh tropical fruit and a blender. T.G.I. Friday's made popular what is now known as "flair bartending". There was also a revival of "classic cocktails" to go along with the revival of swing dancing.
Or maybe it was just me, who grew up drinking in bars. No kidding. Alcohol beverage control laws aside - when I was a kid, teenagers went to bars. Nobody checked ID back then. If you had money, they served you.
London has its cocktail bars, they were a thing really here from the prohibition era in particular, when there was an influx of American cocktail barmen. Always tended to be in the centre of town, though - it's not something we see much in the East End, though a few good places have opened in the last decade or two as the EE has slowly gentrified. There's a few TGIs here in town, though being so central they tend most to attract tourists, not much local trade.
In Asian cultures, they've always had places that served only sweets. One of those delicacies has crossed over into mainstream culture by way of Tea Shops. Boba tea shops.
In my neighborhood, there are several Italian cafes which only serve sweets and desserts.
It's interesting seeing the differences with these things. I remember when I first went to China - dessert cafes, local restaurants; nobody drank in bars (they were for tourists and very much looked down on), but at the table after dinner. Big changes since then as China opened up to Western influences, though that could of course all change again.
There are tea gourmets. It's cultural. There are many different types of tea, and methods of brewing. Some cultures have ceremonies. Tea aficionados are like other niche groups of people who favor cigars, wines, coffee, and such. They would be able to point out the differences between the different gourmet teas of the world, versus a bag of Lipton. At my house, I have Lipton.
One of the great things in Beijing, especially when you find a good local one off the tourist path. Discovered I very much like Chysanthamum tea out there. Tend to stick to the basics here, though. There's a few bubbletea places around, but it doesn't yet seem to have gone beyond a novelty in the UK. Shanefully, that's one thing I've yet to try.
From what I remember, the creators and writers of that show, based the coffee shop on coffee shops they remembered going to as young people. Maybe it was only in large cities in the USA, like Seattle, Los Angeles, San Francisco, New York, Philadelphia. But that model of a neighborhood coffee house, with random second hand furniture, thrift store decor, bookshelves where people could take and/or leave books, a bulletin board, poetry readings, singers, and other unpaid performers, wasn't new. They were around when I was a boy. I guess the television show popularized that type of coffee shop worldwide. What that television show featured, which I had never seen before, was drinking coffee from a soup bowl. Those coffee cups were huge. They looked like they could serve Vietnamese Pho.
Yes, I think it very much did. Funny thing is that at one time - back in the Regency era - London was famous for its coffeehouses, but that culture seemed to die out and then come back in this other form, more as an international influence, rather than a continuity. It's something so commonly misunderstood now that there's even a pretentious hipster cafe down in Vauxhall that makes a show of not serving coffee, affecting to find it "American", "not British", and pointedly marketing itself as a tea place.