Last night, my sweetheart treated me to a surprise Valentine’s dinner at Queen of Sheba, an Ethiopian restaurant in Chapel Hill.
Yum.
I’m not an adventurous eater AT ALL. But I’ll eat anything at Queen of Sheba, even if I don’t immediately recognize it. It’s that good.
The last time I was at Sheba’s was in November when our SIETAR-NC group went there for dinner. Using torn-off pieces of a very thin pancake-like bread, we scooped up spicy lentils and creamy mashed chickpeas off a communal round platter.
Towards the end of our meal, our lovely server, who I think was the restaurant owner, spent some time talking with us about her native Ethiopia. What caught my attention was the bit about coffee: it’s a beverage meant to be shared, not consumed alone.
I love coffee. I love coffee shops. Whenever I need a creative tune-up, I head to one of my favorite cafés. While studying for my PhD exams, and later writing my dissertation, my brain sparked the best ideas while sipping a creamy latte or smooth café au lait in a secluded corner of Schuler’s, Beaners , and later Caribou, Weaver Street , and 3 Cups …alone.
For me, coffee is creativity, ideas, stamina, and too often in a paper cup. Because much of my work and many of my North Carolina to Michigan road trips have been solitary ventures, coffee was my warm and comforting companion.
So my reaction to hearing that coffee is never (traditionally) consumed alone in Ethiopia was ethno-centric: I’d never survive there, there’s no way I could always drink coffee with others, I couldn’t imagine making small-talk in order to get coffee, etc.
But before I got too far with this line of thought I laughed at myself because 1) I’m not going to Ethiopia any time soon (though I’d love to), so it’s not like this is going to be an immediate problem, and 2) I’m supposed to be open-minded about things like this, right?
Then I started thinking about coffee from a different perspective: I began to recall the numerous times coffee has been a community experience for me:
When I’m at home to visit family, we spent hours at 5th Street Public Market sucking down americanos and café au laits while catching up.
My grandma, a fellow coffee enthusiast, and I often express missing each other by saying “I wish you were here so we could go get a latte!”
At a conference in Seattle a few years ago, a grad school friend and I re-connected over lattes in one of the oldest cafés in town.
I conducted diss interviews with study abroad students at German cafés.
My husband and I love reading while sitting close at a tiny round table, our coffee cups inches apart.
While teaching in Freiburg, Germany a few years ago, I spent afternoons planning lessons with my colleagues…in a café, over coffee.
You get the idea.
I still love scoring that perfectly secluded café table near the window that offers the perfect balance of espresso-machine hissing and quiet isolation so I can work in blissful solitude. But after thinking about coffee from a different perspective, I have a better appreciation of the times when coffee creates community.
Journaling Prompt: What does coffee mean to you?
