Closest legal thing to cocaine - Longline - Best coffee in Ploiești
Ok, I know: who the hell cares about where to drink a good coffee in a city most of you never heard about? Probably a very small portion of the readers (If I'm lucky!) but that small portion deserves the right to know where to drink something that it's meant to keep you vigorous throughout the day, especially in an industrial place where people REALLY do need power and lucidity in order to develop their activities.
I'll have to admit that I was a big fan of Starbucks. Hold your horses and don't blame me just yet because I have a real reason for that: I was a stupid guy, raised in what used to be a communist country (to be read "barn"), behind the Iron Curtain and whatever western brand was coming here (especially American brands) were not only welcomed by me but at a certain point in time I think I would have sucked dicks for whatever commodities from the "free world" I would find. When I was saying "coffee" a few years back, Starbucks was my clear threshold and nothing could get near it.
The peasant inside me woke up when a dear friend of mine, the type that discovered coffee when we were living together in Bucharest during university and he was studying for the Medical School exams having to stay awake at night, opened my eyes. I was a coffee drinker long before he tasted the damn thing but he needed real coffee in order to get over those sleepless nights so he began to develop a passion for finding good sorts and good blends throughout the city even after we finished sharing an apartment. So one Sunday morning, being both at home, we went out in our native city to have a coffee and after he said some hard words to me when I pushed to go to Starbucks, he sent me the location of Longline Coffee place.
Strange thing! I was living in this city while he was away in the capital and I didn't know about the place. A small one indeed but set in one area that survived the communist demolitions so in a historical building, the sort I usually check out. The coffee place was very small, designed and developed by a passionate girl who loves coffee and loves to experiment. Meanwhile, they moved a little bit further down the same street, in a bigger place (but still small enough to make you feel comfortable) that has the clear advantage of creating a very friendly environment ESPECIALLY during sunny mornings (like the one we had today) when it takes the best Sun rays on its small terrace.
They have a monster of an espresso machine. I'm not an expert but it looks like I couldn't afford it without selling my good kidney.
Their philosophy about coffee is pretty simple: they have a small supplier of small quantities of very traceable origins coffee. For example today I drank a very special (and requested) blend from Papua New Guinee. They offer to put sugar in it but you get a nice smile and nice words when you say the magical words: "No sugar please!".
The double espresso they make (or even the normal one, it's only about the dimension) is a killer. Imagine you drank and fucked all night, had two fat spliffs, took the kid to the kindergarten in the morning (sleeping only 2-3 hours) and then you have to be active because it's a working day - this espresso will keep you moving all day and maybe give you some juice to run in the afternoon also for some house chores. For me, that's better than cocaine because I don't have to pay 50 bucks for a gram that's diluted with flour. And I avoid Police this way too. This espresso is only diluted with devil souls I guess, that's how "spicy" it gets when you swallow it.
For a beginner in modern espresso, a sip from their cup translates to faces you have never seen or made. Tastes between the tongue and the palate can vary from the normally bitter taste to a little sour and then the spicy aftertaste on the sides of the tongue. Drink a little bit more, taste the flavours a little bit more, staying focused on what you feel and you will start to receive that subtle info (like in wines): in the case of today's blend I felt the rich body of the coffee bean (in the smell), the sweet aftertaste but also the finesse texture of the final product that drips so nicely from the espresso machine.
They also make other nice "accessories" to coffee, accessories that will go very nicely with a free hour in the morning, a nice book and the whole range of coffee flavours inside and around Longline: gingerbread, small and tasty sandwiches, root beers and specialised brands of juices plus the whole range of different sorts of coffee beverages based on the weekly coffee blend they have. The first two are homemade by them and I say "homemade" because they are not an industrial business but rather a maximum 3-4 employee company that does everything together with the owner.
I am now, while writing, under the influence of one of the best espressos I ever tasted (another great one is made in Cluj city, by Meron Coffee) and my hands are fast and steady (no trembling from the extra push coffee gives sometimes), I can write like an experienced typist, my mind can compose ideas pretty fast while I'm also developing other strings of activities I have to do today.
Maybe you'll not get around Ploiești to taste the coffee these guys have but I'm sure that wherever you are you can find a small, good coffee place, the kind that is a small, family business, the kind that puts soul into their products and the kind that will not avoid to give you free samples of different blends if you happen to be there when the new batch is dropping in. My only advice is to look for that kind of places and if there is none, then you should start one.
I think we should all start supporting smaller, individual or family businesses instead of the big multinational colossus that will not only bring bad quality because of their very hard to administer business plan but that also have lost their ability to make one feel humanly welcomed in their shops.
Posted also on my blog www.ddma.ro, a place on the world wide web where I'm trying to promote Steemit, my writings and my country. In that order. I post through the @steempress-io plugin and I make my life easier (writing and formatting in Wordpress is much easier than on steemit.com or busy.org)