I try to limit the amount of caffeine in my system on any given day for the sake of those around me. Given that one drop too much, I become intensely manic, and not at all in the good sense of the word. I have the attention span of a gnat when over-caffeinated and can’t put two sentences together without thinking of something else that I need to absolutely do at just that moment.
That is why this column has been on my computer for three days now being painfully scratched out two to three sentences at a time. In between I’ve done laundry, changed bed sheets, called everyone in my phone book that I thought might be home, bathed my dog and watered my plants. And that was just this morning.
Anchorage has a love affair with lattes that is surprising for a city that prides itself on being the gateway to the wilderness. Of course, the wilderness is a little easier to bear when you are carrying a full caf, 16 oz. White Chocolate Wedding Cake latte into it.
You can’t drive down the street anywhere in this city without running into a dozen latte stands. Most are individually owned. This makes shopping for the best latte a lot more fun than in those places where Starbucks is considered avant-garde in the field of caffeine renewal. In Anchorage, you can spend a year going from stand to stand trying every strangely named latte known to man, all guaranteed to perk you up and keep you from blinking for the next 8 to 10 hours.
If I end up living a life of genteel poverty (and all evidence certainly seems to be pointing in that direction), it will be because of one particular coffee stand here in South Anchorage. I consider it a good day when I can confine myself to one visit only. I freely admit to being addicted to their lattes and know that someday my $4/cup habit will catch up with me and I’ll have to sell my ivory to keep paying for my coffee.
The rest of the country doesn’t seem to have caught on to this trend the way Alaska has. I mean, seriously, I can drive from Anchorage to Homer and always have a fresh latte in my cup holder because on the loneliest stretch of road there will still always be a coffee stand.
When I was on the East Coast this spring I went through serious latte withdrawal. Not only do they not have little stands dotting their highways and byways, even their Starbucks puts out a questionable product. The very nice people working in the Atlantic City one couldn’t figure out for the life of them how to make a blended latte.
When I went to Port Authority in New York City to catch a bus back to Atlantic City, I stopped at a refreshment stand in the terminal for a cup of coffee. It was like stepping back thirty years in time. I was handed a cup of dark brown liquid and directed towards the little powdered creamer containers when I asked for milk. I didn’t even try to explain a latte to them. I was afraid I’d be mocked.
Starbucks does have outposts in New York City and I was able to find faint imitations of the coffee available at every corner here in Alaska. But it just wasn’t the same as you get when you stop at a place where the owner is making the coffee and has a vested interest in having you like it enough to return.
I’m not sure why Anchorage is on what seems to be the cutting edge of this trend. It’s not like we are used to being on the cutting edge of anything. And yet we definitely seem to lead the nation in this one very important area. We make better coffee in more creative ways than anywhere else in America. It may not seem like much of an accomplishment to a tea drinker, but for us coffee fiends it’s an unsurpassed joy.
So if you are wondering where I get my sugar free White Chocolate Coffee Cake latte, well I’m tempted to keep that a secret so the line won’t be any longer than it already is when I pull in. But to all my fellow coffee fiends let me just say, check out Caf� Loco. It doesn’t get much better than that.