Foodies Clan

Edouardo Jordan’s career path from Bennigan’s server to chef-owner of a Seattle restaurant group

In How I Got My Job, folks from across the food and restaurant industry answer Eater’s questions about, well, how they got their job. Today’s installment: Edouardo Jordan.

Edouardo Jordan has been on a hot streak since the 2015 opening of his first restaurant, Salare. Things really heated up for the Seattle-based chef a couple years back when his Southern-food restaurant JuneBaby was named Eater’s Best New Restaurant of 2017 — swiftly followed by a three-star review from New York Times critic Pete Wells and a spot on Food & Wine’s list of the best restaurants of 2018. Jordan was a double winner at last year’s James Beard Awards, earning both the Best New Restaurant and Best Chef: Northwest awards.

But Jordan didn’t set out to become a chef until about a year after his graduation from the University of Florida, when he changed tracks from sports management and enrolled at Le Cordon Bleu. Here now, Jordan shares how he got his job.

Eater: What does your job involve?

Edouardo Jordan: Training, menu planning, coach, fixer of all things, bookkeeping, punisher, awarder, daddy, mom, father, son, and sometimes the holy spirit.

What did you want to do when you started your career?

I graduated from the University of Florida with dual degrees: sports management and business administration. I was initially in the sports world. After less than a year, I started my path in the food world.

Did you go to culinary school or college? If so, would you recommend it?

Culinary is needed if you cannot find a mentor or place that can help you get the foundation of cooking and prepping down. I don’t recommend it and would not recommend it if my son wanted to become a chef.

What would you have done differently at school or paid more attention to?

I was a rockstar in school. I would not change a thing… maybe no culinary school, but who knows where I would be without it.

Student loans are such a part of the conversation around higher education right now. Has your career trajectory been impacted by debt in any way?

Still paying... so, yes.

What was your first job? What did it involve?

My first culinary job was a server at Bennigan’s restaurant, then a chocolatier assistant with Ewald Notter, then the fry guy at a Mexican restaurant as my first kitchen job.

What was the biggest challenge you faced when you were starting out in the industry?

Catching up to speed and learning ingredients that I have never tasted or seen before. I come from a humble background, so much of the food that I was cooking was foreign to me.

When was the first time you felt successful?

Yesterday. LOL.

Suzi Pratt

Did you have any setbacks? What were they?

Every day there [are setbacks] sometimes. Too many to name, but luckily there are a number of blessings that counter those setbacks.

What was the turning point that led to where you are now?

Learning and growing, running my first restaurant [as chef de cuisine] at Bar Sajor, and finally obtaining the money to open my first place, Salare restaurant.

What were the most important skills that got you there?

Confidence, reassurance, determination, and drive.

Do you have, or did you ever have, a mentor in your field? How has that made a difference?

Not necessarily, but I loved emulating the leadership that I experienced working under chef Jonathan Benno. He is a tough chef, demands the best, pushes the team, but at the same time respects everyone. He knows how to lighten the kitchen with jokes when needed but is probably the chef you would want to to lead you through a battle.

What’s your favorite part of your job?

Working with [so] many young culinarians in the front and back of the house and guiding them to the next level.

How are you making change in your industry?

Inspiring and motivating so many new folks into the industry. I’m thinking about minimizing waste, cultivating positive workplaces, and creating career-oriented jobs in my own operations.

What’s the best piece of career advice you’ve been given?

Find your voice!

What advice would you give someone who wants your job?

Get in line!

Amy McKeever is a freelance writer based in Washington, DC.
Photo of Edouardo Jordan by Shannon Renfroe.
Illustrations from the Noun Project: Camera by Dhika Hernandita; Covered dish by Made by Made; wine by Made by Made; lightbulb by Maxim Kulikov; handwriting by Pongsakorn.

At Sol Sips, Eater Young Gun Francesca Chaney (’19) wants to change who gets to be a part of the wellness conversation — a mission her customers are happy to support 

Go to Brooklyn cafe Sol Sips early enough and you might see owner Francesca Chaney disappear on a bicycle and roll up 10 minutes later with extra groceries or flowers. There’s something comforting about using a bicycle to run errands, whether you grew up in the city or the suburbs, and watching Chaney, a 2019 Eater Young Gun, go about her morning on two wheels communicates something that doesn’t need to be said: This is her neighborhood.

On this particular Saturday, the summer is thick in the air and Chaney is sorting carnations to place on the tables and counter of her vegan cafe. Nicknamed Sol by her friends, she’s an East Brooklyn native and a 23-year-old black woman. Chaney’s intentions as a restaurateur are deliberate and meaningful.

Chaney’s journey to becoming a business owner began when she sought out nutritious and convenient options in her neighborhood. She found slim pickings, so she decided to do something about it. She started selling her organic smoothies and juices out of her cousin’s apothecary, which evolved into a pop-up complete with vegan food, which in April 2018 became the permanent fixture it is today, situated on a quiet street in Bushwick. Her next challenge is to spread the word to those in the community.

Chaney wants to center people of color in the wellness movement. The wellness industry raked in $4.2 trillion in 2017. Its growth is twofold: Vegan, or plant-based, eating is no longer just a personal health matter, but also an altruistic mission, given the environmental costs associated with eating meat and processed foods. But despite the large numbers of poorer, darker people of the world engaging in vegetarian recipes for millennia, the narrative around the health benefits of plant-based diets has been driven by white people of the West. “Before we opened, my personal goal was to make sure we had room at the table for everyone,” she tells Eater. “The community that has evolved within Sol Sips is very diverse, and there are people coming from so many different places who have been interested in learning about how to incorporate vegan options — or just incorporate vegetables into their diet.”

Chaney’s attempt to change perceptions around who gets to be vegan comes in the form of a vegan sliding-scale brunch where diners pay between $7 and $15 for a full meal and freshly squeezed juice. On this Saturday morning in July, the customers were locals and regulars, as well as vegans who learned of Sol Sips through social media. They all seemed to recognize that Chaney was doing something special.

Many Sol Sips customers come to the tiny Bushwick restaurant precisely because they appreciate what Chaney is doing for her community. “I feel like especially in the city, there is a range of incomes, and a range where not everybody can go for a $15 and $20 brunch every Sunday,” said Christa Pratt, one of Chaney’s early supporters, while waiting for her meal during sliding-scale brunch. “But you know, everybody deserves to wind down every now and then. I think it’s great that she was able to find a sweet spot where she can get what she needs and people can pay what they can pay.”

James Lim, who calls himself a “fake vegan,” was visiting Sol Sips for the second time. “I think it’s great, I think it makes it super accessible, especially to have a cuisine such as this,” he said. “I feel like sometimes even cuisine can be perceived as kind of bougie and overpriced in a lot of places I will not mention. It’s nice that a place like this is here.”

Bushwick has been rapidly gentrifying for the last 10 years. For Bushwick natives like Sol Sips customer Tammy Martinez, dining options were limited to cheaper fast food or overpriced white-owned restaurants and cafes. She says Sol Sips was a welcome addition to the neighborhood. “I was surprised to see someone so young and, you know, and my type of people... making it happen out here,” she said during brunch. “We want her to grow bigger and open more places, because we need more places like this. It’s a good place to come and eat real good food, healthy food, and come and relax.“

Although Sol Sips may have started as a neighborhood secret, word has gotten out: Yelp and Google searches for vegan food lead many customers to the restaurant. For these customers, the convenience of location and appetizing food matters more than the accessible price. The first time many of them hear about the sliding-scale brunch is when they’re told about it by Chaney at the register, by which time they’re more concerned about satisfying their hunger than the virtuosic message of a possible choice. When reminded of what exactly the sliding-brunch is during interviews, several of that day’s vegan customers congratulated her. “That’s amazing. I can definitely relate sometimes to when I’ve only had seven bucks,” said Carla Peralta, a vegan and recent Bushwick resident.

The range of customers at Sol Sips speaks to how the internet leads diners to new restaurants — those who already frequent vegan restaurants will search for and go to new vegan restaurants, and those who aren’t vegan probably won’t. But a few Sol Sips customers were drawn to specific dishes Chaney is serving at Sol Sips, like the jerk jackfruit. Non-vegan Crystal Scott says her vegan coworker’s recommendations led her to make the drive out from the Bronx. “I came out of curiosity, mostly,” she said. She ordered the sliding-scale brunch.

Much of Sol Sips’s popularity, however, hasn’t come from traditional word of mouth, but instead from the platform Chaney has created on social media, along with the attention she’s received from traditional media outlets. Disrupting the white-and-thin trope of veganism is just as important to many of her followers as it is to her. “I was really intrigued and happy to see a business like this open up. Especially in a gentrified area such as Bushwick,” said Lim, who read about Chaney online before going to Sol Sips. “I think it’s important to support.”

As the word spreads about Sol Sips and its sliding-scale brunch, Chaney’s evolution into an inclusive voice for the wellness community continues. Her full-service restaurant, First Sunday by Sol Sips, is set to launch in the fall as another iteration of her mission statement: to encourage accessibility and community through healthy food. A larger space will allow her to intersect art and music with her food and expand her menu. She aims to continue spreading her message of inclusivity, and hopes to have a version of the sliding scale at her new restaurant. Her supporters at Sol Sips will no doubt be there to cheer her on.

“Look at her now,” Martinez said. “You’re here interested in her story, you know what I’m saying? It’s happening, and it’s going to continue happening, because we’re all going to stick together, and we’re going to help each other out. And this is what it’s all about: support.”

Pelin Keskin is an associate producer at Eater.
Gary He is a New York City-based photojournalist.

The controversial sushi restaurant gets its first star in the 2020 guide to Washington, D.C. 

Today, Michelin, the dining guide run by a French tire company, announced its list of starred restaurants for Washington D.C. Just four new restaurants joined the ranks of those Michelin deems the best in the nation’s capital, all with one star. And with these new selections, a restaurant with controversial ties to President Trump — both due to its location inside a Trump property and the comments its owner made after the news got out — was rewarded with one of the fine-dining world’s most sought-after honors.

Sushi Nakazawa, the sushi omakase restaurant from chef Daisuke Nakazawa and restaurateur Alessandro Borgognone, opened in spring 2018 inside the Trump International Hotel, in a space was once destined for D.C. chef and humanitarian José Andrés. Andrés pulled out of the deal after the now-President Trump called Mexican immigrants “rapists” and “murderers” in 2015, and his refusal to honor the deal set off a string of back-and-forth lawsuits. The suits were eventually settled.

In 2016, after news of Nakazawa’s opening was announced, the late Anthony Bourdain vowed never to dine there, saying he had “utter and complete contempt” for Borgognone. An Esquire profile published a couple of months later speculated that Borgognone was the “most-hated restaurateur in America” after leasing the space from the Trumps. “You can’t fault a businessperson,” Borgognone told Esquire. “Our decision was based on that... We didn’t have a political agenda.” Months after the opening, Washingtonian restaurant critic Ann Limpert praised the sushi but said that the restaurant was mostly empty.

Popularity, however, is not one of Michelin’s assessment criteria, and Sushi Nakazawa isn’t the first Michelin star for a Trump property. Jean-Georges inside Trump Tower in New York City maintained three Michelins stars for 10 years. In 2018, the restaurant was downgraded to two Michelin stars. Before it closed in 2018, Sixteen in Chicago’s Trump International Tower and Hotel held two Michelin stars.

Meanwhile, Andrés maintains his two Michelin stars at his tasting menu restaurant Minibar (along with a commitment to criticizing Trump on Twitter). Apparently, according to Michelin, the quality of the food is what counts — albeit a very, very specific kind of food served in exacting environs.

• Michelin Guide Reveals 2020 Stars for D.C. [EDC]

With three times the caffeine of regular Coke

No longer content to be the cause of just small caffeine highs across the country, Coca-Cola is finally taking a page from the early aughts and launching a full-on energy drink, Coca-Cola Energy, for the first time in the U.S.

Coca-Cola Energy, which boasts 114 milligrams of caffeine per 12-ounce serving in comparison to a regular Coke’s 34 milligrams (for reference, a 12-ounce cup of coffee has about 136 milligrams of caffeine), has already been available in 25 other countries, including Spain and Great Britain, since earlier this year. But starting in January 2020, U.S. consumers will be able to fuel up on Coke Energy in four flavors: original, Zero Sugar, Cherry, and Zero Sugar Cherry (the new Cherry varieties, created with Americans in mind, are not offered in Europe).

Why is Coca-Cola only now getting into the energy drink game, decades after Monster Energy, AMP, and Red Bull drinks first seized the imagination of extreme sports enthusiasts, teens one-upping each other, sleep-deprived college students, and all-night gamers? Extracurricular activities, apparently. “People are busier than ever. They don’t just work from 9 to 5 and call it a day. Their lives are full, and they’re doing so many more things after ‘work,’” Coca-Cola brand director Janki Gambhir said in a statement, correctly identifying the curse of productivity and eroding work-life balance so endemic to late-stage capitalist hell. “Coke Energy offers great-tasting energy to do the things they need to do, but also the things they want to do.”

As American consumers drink less soda, beverage companies are looking toward energy drinks as a growing category, especially now that there are more flavor options to choose from instead of the classic “nuclear horse piss” and “battery acid” tastes that some people describe. According to Nielsen data, dollar sales of energy drinks increased 11.2 percent in the past year, growing from $11 billion to $12.2 billion, Business Insider reports. Monster Energy, one of the leaders of the energy drink market, is partly owned — via a minority stake of 16.7 percent — by Coca-Cola. Until recently, the two companies were locked in an arbitration battle in which Monster tried to prevent the beverage giant from launching its own brand of energy drinks in the U.S.; in July, the arbitrator decided that Coca-Cola could introduce and sell Coke Energy in the U.S. and other markets.

The launch of Coke Energy marks the first time the 127-year-old brand is launching a Coke beverage that isn’t a soft drink in the U.S., as the company continues to expand its portfolio, Business Insider’s Kate Taylor notes. Soda, energy drinks — what’s next, a hard Coke seltzer to rival Four Loko’s anarchic Seltzer Sour With a Hint of Blue Razz?

• First Coke-Branded Energy Drink to Launch in the U.S. in 2020 [Coca-Cola]
• Coca-Cola to launch Coke-branded energy drink in US, in a bid for more growth [CNBC]
• For the first time ever, Coca-Cola will launch a Coke drink that isn’t a soda across America [Business Insider]

There’s no evidence to support this theory, but we can still explore it

By now, you have likely been enchanted by (or at least made aware of) Untitled Goose Game, the game in which you are a horrible goose wreaking havoc on a small town of people who just want to garden and keep their shoes on, which you, as a horrible goose, obviously cannot allow. Anyone who has been around geese knows that they are assholes, so the question of motivation may seem a tautology—the goose terrorizes because he is a goose, case closed.

In an interview in Vulture, the game’s creators say they theorized the game is “it’s set in a world where a goose chased Margaret Thatcher out of office, leading Tony Benn to take over the U.K. and enact social democracy in the U.K.,” but ultimately, “The goose is this chaotic neutral character. They’re just an animal who’s not really aware of what they’re doing.” Except the author is dead. Twitter is awash with theories as to what the goose is after, whether it’s punishing everyone in the town who voted for Brexit, or simply to prove that the class Aves is superior to Mammalia. But let us throw out another theory: the town’s main industry is foie gras, and the goose has escaped and is getting his revenge.

Foie gras is, to say the very least, a controversial industry. Various countries and states have banned gavage, the process of force-feeding ducks and geese corn to enlarge their livers. Some say there’s an ethical way to produce foie gras, others say even for meat eaters it’s uniquely inhumane. It seems logical that, should a goose have an opportunity to escape such treatment, it would. And thus we begin our game.

Ok, so British farmers are prohibited from producing foie gras, but that’s not going to stop me from running away with this idea like a goose with a bell. Because aside from that pesky detail, it makes perfect sense. First, let’s look at the goose itself. You’d think if the goose really wanted to annoy these people, it’d use its wings to fly on top of them and really mess them up. But you can never fly as the goose, nor can you even jump. Perhaps this is an example of the simple gameplay, or its proof that the goose has been kept in captivity its whole life and lacks the muscles to do anything but run and drag carrots around.

Second, consider the things the goose is often tasked to steal. It has to make itself a picnic out of stolen food. Ir has to set a table with knives and forks stolen for a pub. It lures a man into great harm by running off with his tomatoes. The goose fucks with people by fucking with their food, as if to say I understand all too well the lengths to which you will go for culinary pleasure, and I will deny you as I have been denied. The goose does not steal the cabbage and the sandwich to eat; after a lifetime of force-feeding, it knows food only as pain. It’s had enough gavage — time for re-va(n)ge.

Finally, where are the other geese? Any amateur ornithologist will tell you that geese come in flocks, descending on your lawns and streets in order to cover them in shit. And yet the goose is the only goose to be found. In the beginning of the game we see the goose’s “home,” a small enclave it has nestled out for itself in the woods, surrounded by trophies of previous victories against the townspeople. The other geese, naturally, must be back in the factory, and the goose has been here for some time. Perhaps the goose, when it first escaped, hoped that by getting their attention, the people in the town would see the cost of the industry they rely on. Do you hear the goose’s honk? it cried. Honking the honk of angry geese. But now, it feels like honking into a well. The goose has grown bitter.

The only power it has now is to annoy, and hope that the townspeople grow so frustrated by the mere idea of geese that they decide any proximity to them is too much, and shut down the farm so they never have to hear again another honk. Finally, then, will the goose picnic in peace.

Eater Young Gun Felipe Riccio (’14) learned the hard way that fish bones do not belong in the trash

My First F-Up is a series in which we ask Eater Young Guns and industry talent to recall their first — or most notable — on-the-job failure.

2019 has been a busy year for Eater Young Gun Felipe Riccio (’14): As the executive chef of the Houston restaurant group Goodnight Hospitality, he’s opening two restaurants and a wine and cheese shop with his business partner, David Keck. To say that Riccio, who was born in Mexico and grew up there and in the Houston suburbs, has learned a lot of business savvy along the way is an understatement. But one of his more enduring lessons came when Riccio got schooled in the art of kitchen waste management.

“I was working for an old-school French chef in the suburbs of Houston, where I grew up. He would always talk about how he grew up in kitchens, and how important it was to use as much as you can of [every ingredient]. He was a stickler about it. We had two or three other cooks; one did prep, two were on the line, and they would always tell me, ‘Make sure you don’t throw stuff away, because he’ll notice.’

“One night we had this big event. One cook was butchering and cleaning some fish, and he asked me to clean up his station. So I threw [the fish] away, not really thinking about it. At the end of the night the chef came by and picked up the trash can. I’d never noticed that [he’d do that] before, but he’d walk by and feel how heavy the bin was. He looked right at me, walked out the back door, and said, ‘Come with me, we’re going to throw out the trash.’ He literally dumps the trash on the ground and starts pointing at everything I shouldn’t have throw away, telling me what I could do with it in a somewhat angry but not super-rude way. ‘You could have made stock with this, could have used that better.’

“He didn’t do it because he wanted to save the planet. For him, it was dollar signs; it was always about food costs and utilizing something better. As a young cook, I was pissed — what an asshole, now I’ve gotta pick up fish bones in the parking lot. But it stuck with me. To this day, I tell my cooks, when you’re doing something, think about why you’re doing it that way, don’t just do it because you were taught to. Now, we save all of the scraps at the restaurant and ferment them through bokashi, a Japanese composting method, and then we take them to our farm and use them for our soil.”

Rebecca Flint Marx is a James Beard Award-winning food writer based in Brooklyn.

Plus, scientists still can’t agree on red meat, and more news to start your day

The debate surrounding the supermarket “ethnic” food aisle

In many supermarkets, tortillas, soy sauce, and other products connected to Asian and Latin American countries are often still relegated to the “ethnic” food aisle — a place that David Chang recently called “the last bastion of racism that you can see in full daylight in retail America” on his podcast.

To some shoppers and supermarket owners, grouping these items together makes sense because it caters to convenience, and can even help maximize the sales of those products, according to a new Washington Post report about the ethnic food aisle. But to some children of immigrants, like Chang, the continued existence of the ethnic food aisle is an outdated remnant of “1950s America,” an era when the blatant segregation and marginalization of immigrants and people of color was even more commonplace than it is today (although now, by all accounts, is not a particularly great time for immigrants in the U.S., either).

Chang, in an interview with the Post, called this phenomenon an “invisible ceiling” on some supermarket items:

Italian products that were once marginalized, such as olive oils and vinegars, are now routinely integrated into grocery store aisles, while Chinese, Japanese and Latino foods remain stuck in their own sections. The ongoing segregation of these foods, Chang says, isn’t about acceptance among the mainstream. Asian and Latino cuisines have long been embraced by Americans of every stripe, he says.

Growing up, Chang said, the ethnic food aisle was a reminder that he was different from white America: “We were always going to be different … We were never going to be accepted.” Now that tacos, stir fries, and other dishes that are made with these ethnic food aisle ingredients have become common fixtures in the American diet, Chang argued, it’s time to get rid of the separate aisle.

Disclosure: David Chang is producing shows for Hulu in partnership with Vox Media Studios, part of Eater’s parent company, Vox Media. No Eater staff member is involved in the production of those shows, and this does not impact coverage on Eater.

And in other news…

• Dietary guidelines have long maintained that eating too much red meat is bad for your health. But a new series of analyses produced by a cohort of researchers threatens to upend that dietary recommendation, claiming that the link between red meat and illnesses like heart disease and cancer is too weak to tell people to cut back on beef and pork. Other scientists and public health researchers, meanwhile, are fiercely criticizing this new study and its methodology. [NPR]
• While many would-be authors may still dream of landing a cookbook deal, some publishers have taken to offering these unpublished writers low or no advances, no royalties, and nondisclosure agreements. [NYT]
• A New York City Council member wants to limit delivery companies’ profits. [NY Post]
• October 1 marks the beginning of something called “National Pizza Month,” which apparently includes a bunch of restaurants and brands giving away free pizza. [Today]
• MTV apparently ripped off First We Feast’s Hot Ones with a Wendy’s-sponsored segment called Wild Sauce, Hot Ones host Sean Evans pointed out on Twitter. [Vice]
• Want to be an NBA food tester? There’s a sweepstakes for that. [Pickswise]
• Costco is selling a beer advent calendar. Festive! [Delish]
• Mauro Colagreco, the chef behind “World’s Best” restaurant Mirazur, is overseeing a few Dubai restaurants. [What’s On]
• Alain Ducasse on why he’s moving towards casual dining. [Michelin Guide]

• All AM Intel Coverage [E]

At New York City bar Bemelmans, drinking the classic cocktail feels both of the moment and eternal

Martinis tell time. They’re not to be rushed or wasted; you’re supposed to savor them, in sips that set their own clock. Martinis, like moments, have ephemeral power. “The proper union of gin and vermouth is a great and sudden glory; it is one of the happiest marriages on earth, and one of the shortest lived,” Bernard DeVoto, the essayist and martini apostle, wrote. “The fragile tie of ecstasy is broken in a few minutes, and thereafter there can be no remarriage.” That and many other odes have accumulated over the decades, echoing through bars like Bemelmans, which opened in 1947 in the Carlyle Hotel on Manhattan’s Upper East Side.

“A martini is classic,” Dimitrios Michalopoulos, the bar manager, told me. “It gives you the impression you live in the old days and you live in a different world.” A majority of visitors come just for the martinis, which are made to taste; on a typical night, between 60 and 100 are served. There are waiters in white tuxedo jackets and black bow ties, a guy named Earl Rose at a baby grand playing a jazzed-up version of “Gymopédie No. 1.” The murals on the walls — painted by Ludwig Bemelmans, an old days’ Carlyle tenant, for whom the place is named; also, the author of the Madeline children’s books — depict scenes of Central Park and musicians who once performed at the bar. Paul McCartney has been a regular for years; his drink is not a martini but a margarita with some orange juice and a pineapple wedge. The bartenders accommodate him.

Drinkers are particular about what they want; with martinis, the concern has always been how. They arose at the end of the 19th century, first appearing in bartending manuals in 1888. The ingredients were gin and vermouth, sometimes bitters or curaçao. In a new book, The Martini Cocktail, Robert Simonson, who writes about drinks for the New York Times, explains that early versions were sweet. “Sweet vermouth?” Michalopoulos said, disbelieving. “Oh, we wouldn’t ask if people want that, because that would be something different.”

Martinis became popular almost immediately, mythologized by literature and film, contemporaneously and nostalgically, with poetic observation and absurd exaggeration. They’ve had high and low points. Ernest Hemingway, famously, in A Farewell to Arms: “They made me feel civilized.” Nikita Khrushchev, cheekily, during the Cold War: They’re “America’s most lethal weapon.” They’ve become dryer and dryer: During the Prohibition, according to the cultural critic Gilbert Seldes, the spirit-to-vermouth ratio went from four-to-one to eight-to-one; in 1952, the Times reported “mass madness, a cult, a frenzy” driving the dry-martini market. Martinis came under attack by Jimmy Carter and were defended by Gerald Ford, who argued, “The three-martini lunch is the epitome of American efficiency.”

For a while, martinis looked endangered; people tried them on the rocks. In the early ’90s, in Athens, Ohio, a man named Robert Donohoe grew concerned about the situation, and so started the American Standard Dry Martini Club, which produced a newsletter called “The Martini Hotline.” Donohoe was a stiff-necked advocate of the American Standard Dry Martini (straight up gin, though he’ll let you stir clockwise, counterclockwise, or in a figure eight) and once told the Times, “a vodka Martini is not a Martini at all.” He would be cited as a martini titan by Lowell Edmunds, a Rutgers professor who wrote the preeminent history of martinis, published as Martini, Straight Up when the ’90s brought a cocktail revival — just in time for the last of the three-martini lunches, more than a few of them at Bemelmans.

When you sit down for a martini at Bemelmans, after the applause dies down for Mr. Rose, a waiter asks what kind you want. “Gin,” you say. “What kind of gin?” comes the reply. “Tanqueray, Bombay Sapphire, Hendrick’s, Monkey 47…?” The waiter runs down a menu of 13 options (there are also nine vodkas). You ignore the fact that Bemelmans imposes a $4 “as a martini” surcharge; an order with Hendrick’s costs $25. Then the waiter asks how you like it. “Most of our crowd, they prefer their martinis dry, which means no vermouth,” Michalopoulos told me. None at all? “Nothing,” he confirmed. “In Europe it’s mostly gin and they always use vermouth. Here, it’s different preferences.”

The tendency toward fastidious martini orders is maybe a function of how little there is to a martini, and how much weighs on what’s there. I tend to focus on the vermouth. Simonson explains that the color of an early martini resembled that of a Manhattan, its Irish twin, because whiskey then was lighter and vermouth was amber. Ogden Nash’s “mellow, yellow martini” would have been faithfully descriptive, and not too dangerous. Defenders of dry ones may ask for just a “whisper,” which has been taken to extremes: in the ’50s, a “vermouth atomizer” was invented, to add a “mist” to your drink; in the ’60s came a “vermouth dropper,” which resembled a piece of medical equipment. Then there’s the tried-and-true technique of pouring a bit of vermouth into an empty glass, giving it a swirl, and dumping it out. That’s not enough for my taste, though it’s hard to deny that either too much or too little can ruin a night. Vermouth is what determines your fate: There are memorable martinis and there are unmemorable ones, and that is not the same thing as good and bad.

“It’s always stirred unless they ask for it to be shaken,” Michalopoulos went on. (James Bond, as everyone knows, is wrong.) You can get a twist of lemon, olives (Bemelmans defaults to three), or pickled onion. If you don’t know what you want, you’ll get the bar’s standard version: vodka, slightly dirty, with olives. The other night, I swear I saw a stately woman in a ponytail sipping on a martini with both an olive and a lemon in it.

Simonson’s message, as with Bemelmans, as with Burger King, is Have It Your Way. His book contains recipes that include historic preparations and creative ones (the Sakura Martini, at Bar Goto, with a slightly salty cherry blossom; the Fitty-Fitty, at Pegu Club, which is as wet as you’d want to get). He argues, “Everyone is wrong about the martini, because everyone is right about the martini.” Within reason, I guess, because there’s invention and there’s distortion: i.e., the raspberry martini, the Lady Godiva martini. Bar Louie, a national chain, has a menu of “Signature Martinis” that includes, among other oddities, “The Clover (200 cal.)” with Maker’s Mark, Courvoisier, agave, “fresh lemon and oranges juices,” and an orange twist. Not to be a total Donohoe, but if we don’t draw a line somewhere, won’t the martini name be rendered meaningless? When Simonson addresses similar angst, he shrugs; the name doesn’t always refer to what’s inside: “The glass was the thing, not the drink,” he writes. (He then excludes nontraditional martinis from the recipes in his book.)

The glass matters. At Bemelmans, a serving is three ounces, with most of it poured into a traditional glass — a straight-sided cone on a stem — and some extra in a little carafe, hugged by cup of ice. The coldness of a martini — the icy sting of it — is often thought to be its essential feature, and that’s what Simonson’s father told him made a martini his drink: “It’s a definite shock, the feeling and the taste. It makes you sit up and pay attention.” According to Edmunds, that sensation is a function of the glass design, too: “It is a glass from which a drink is easily spilled.” A martini is a privilege, a responsibility, and you’d better keep your eye on it.

In that sense, to drink a martini is to experience the present. Martinis tell time, and keep you still. They’re not merely wistful; they’re assertive. They insist upon your attention to the shocking, gripping, disagreeable, loving world. And you can’t set them aside. Per DeVoto: “You can no more keep a martini in the refrigerator than you can keep a kiss in there.”

Betsy Morais is the managing editor of the Columbia Journalism Review. She previously worked at the New Yorker, Harper’s, and the Atlantic.
Bárbara Malagoli multidisciplinary artist based in London.

The natural wine trend in the making is fizzy, low ABV, affordable, and about to be everywhere

Welcome to Ask a Somm, a column in which experts from across the country answer questions about wine. Today’s installment: What comes after skin-contact wine?

While keeping up with the trends that abound in the world of wine is an endless task for a consumer, no one is as responsible for that upkeep as the sommeliers, beverage directors, and wine shop staffers constantly fielding queries about what to drink right now. And what’s everyone been sipping lately? Well, if you ask those very wine professionals, it’s skin-contact — or “orange” — wine; that’s white wine made like red wine, where the grape skins remain in contact with the juice for days or even months.

Skin contact is the new pét-nat (sparkling wine that’s made by taking still-fermenting wine and letting it complete fermentation in the bottle), which was the new rosé at its prime. So, what comes next, trend-wise, after skin contact?

“People are all over piquette lately,” says Philadelphia-based sommelier and Eater Young Gun Kaitlyn Caruke (‘18). Miguel de Leon, the general manager and wine director of New York’s Pinch Chinese, agrees. “The wine is never too precious nor expensive,” says de Leon. “It provides a happy medium.”

Piquette is a style of wine that’s made by adding water to grape pomace (the leftover skins, seeds, and stems of the fruit) and fermenting what’s left of the sugars. Employing byproduct that would otherwise be thrown out, piquette can be made from countless numbers of grapes that winemakers are left with after bottling their traditional wines. The centuries-old method is known to have been enjoyed by vineyard workers and family members; it’s characterized by an exciting jolt of fizz and a lower ABV (around 4 to 9 percent, compared to, say, lambrusco’s 11 percent). “The bubbles make it all seem very appropriate for any occasion,” says de Leon. “I’ve personally drunk piquette at the beach, in a restaurant, during a cookout, and discreetly while walking around town — when it’s in a can.”

If piquette does experience the renaissance that both Caruke and de Leon foresee, it will have Hudson, New York-based winemaker Todd Cavallo to thank. In 2016, Cavallo made his initial piquette, becoming the first producer to make it commercially in North America. Today his Hudson Valley farm Wild Arc offers a rainbow of piquettes ranging from riesling, cabernet franc, and teroldego grapes — and has inspired a legion of American winemakers to do the same. “It’s hard to say if it will trend as rapidly as pét-nat,” admits Caruke, “but I am fielding more questions about the style than ever before, [and] that’s in large part due to Todd’s work.”

Instagram/Wild Arc Farm

“I think [Cavallo is] redefining the relationship between the Hudson Valley and New York with his winemaking,” says de Leon. “More and more younger winemakers are daring to make truly American wine by couching those identities with grapes that have yet to define themselves.”

The winemakers at Maryland’s Old Westminster Road started making their own piquette after trying Cavallo’s; Hill Country winemaker Regan Meador of Southold Cellars likens his piquette to a sweet, tart sour beer chugger; it has 4 percent ABV. Revered Australian natural winery Lucy Margaux has started bottling a piquette, too.

For all the winemakers playing with piquette, the response has proven overwhelming. Piquette is often sold at a much lower price point, and a lower-in-alcohol option is always a welcomed alternative. Even avid beer drinkers might find it a comfortable replacement once in a while. “Trend-wise, I think piquette has a place since there’s never really been ‘session wine’ before,” says de Leon. “It’s something you can drink plenty of and maintain a low buzz.”

It’s all to say that what’s popular these days was popular centuries ago. Skin-contact wines were made in Georgia some 5,000 years ago, and piquette is nothing new in terms of style. Both Caruke and de Leon cite a return to the unfussiness and pure joy of wine drinking when it comes to the rise of piquette — it’s that attitude which they see as the trend sweeping the wine world.

“I think [overall] the cool kids right now are drinking glug-able Italy,” says Caruke. “Juicy, fresh, lower-alcohol, Italian reds that are just dancing with so much energy and life.” For Caruke personally, piquette is a fresh-feeling option for when she wants to drink something like a gamay or a wine with a bit more oomph than a rosé.

“I have drank a number of Italian red wines lately that I am completely wild about,” she says, “I find myself looking for glou glou from countries other than France nowadays.” Glou glou wines are wines that invite glugging — invoking the chugging sound made while drinking them or pouring one out — and they tend to be both lighter in alcohol, tannins, and body. Still, they have pronounced acidity and minerality.

De Leon is also seeing a lot of guests ask for “lighter” reds that can be served cold when he’s working service at Pinch. “A lot of it is weather temperamental, sure, but it’s nice to hear people asking for it,” he says. One of his current favorites? A German glou glou from the Brand brothers that is a perky red-fruited joy ideal for parties — and only 10 percent ABV.

The grape making up 85 percent of Brand’s red is portugieser, a red found primarily in the Rheinhessen and Pfalz and wine regions of Lower Austria and Slovenia, but largely obscure stateside: another reason people are starting to seek it out, says Caruke.

“I think the people are looking for not as internationally recognizable grape varieties,” she says. “If you go into your local wine shop and see a nero di troia, you’re going to be like, ‘What is that? What does that taste like? Why is the winemaker working with it?’”

The curiosity only leads to more opportunities to learn, and, perhaps, to expand far away from something recognizable, like chardonnay. Chances are your somm is already drinking exactly what you’re looking for.

The frothy milk topping is steadily taking over the Starbucks cold drink menu

The Starbucks menu was once dominated by espresso drinks with complicated ingredients: In the mid-1990s, stores were bombarded with promos for blended, frozen Frappuccino drinks topped with swirls of whipped cream; more recently, purely stunt-flavored Frapps (unicorn! zombie! crystal ball!) dominated the news cycle and social media feeds. But today, these desserts in a cup and glorified hot milkshakes have given way to a new dominant category on the Starbucks menu: coffee with “cold foam.”

Seemingly all at once, Starbucks has become all about iced coffee drinks layered with floating barges of chilled, whipped milk topping. There are now at least 12 different iterations of cold brew on Starbucks menu, including cold brew with cold foam, cold brew with cream cold foam, nitro cold brew with sweet cream, nitro cold brew with cascara cold foam, cold brew with cascara cold foam, and last but not least, pumpkin cream cold brew. For non-coffee drinkers, there’s even a Nitro Lemon Fog with nitrogenated peach tea and a lemon-spiced cold foam topping.

But why is cold foam suddenly so popular? Cynically, social media might still play a part. “I think it’s purely Instagram,” Eli Tea founder and Eater Young Gun Elias Majid says. “It’s all part of the layered beverage trend.” Stratified layers of foam in coffee or cheese in tea make for a more interesting photo than a regular old iced tea or coffee might; unlike the candy-colored drinks of two years ago, they also seem like something an actual coffee drinker might like to consume.

No matter why people are drinking it, cold foam doesn’t seem to be going anywhere anytime soon. Here’s everything you need to know:

What is cold foam?

Regular foam in coffee drinks is typically made by frothing milk with hot steam to form tiny microbubbles. This type of foam is ideal for serving over hot beverages like lattes or even foamier cappuccinos. But when it comes to cold beverages, hot foam just doesn’t hold up. Enter cold foam: foam that’s frothed without the use of heat or steam. The result is a thick and creamy meringue-like topping that’s ideal for layering over the top of iced cold brew, nitro coffee, and iced lattes. While anyone could technically make cold foam, it was popularized in the United States by Starbucks.

What kind of milk does cold foam use?

Despite its relatively creamy consistency, Starbucks cold foam is made using nonfat milk. Generally speaking, nonfat makes a stronger foam than 2 percent or whole milk because it has a larger percentage of protein. (Milks with a higher ratio of fat to protein, like 1 percent and 2 percent milks, are generally preferred for making latte art because the stabilizing quality of lipids keeps the bubbles small, resulting in silky smooth microfoam.)

But what makes milk foam to begin with? Milk protein contains hydrophilic ends that are attracted to water and hydrophobic ends that are repelled by water, according to Serious Eats. With the addition of heat or steam, the proteins unfold to form bubbles, with the water-repelling hydrophobic ends of the protein facing towards the center of the bubble and the hydrophilic ends facing away from the center of the bubble. When vigorously shaken or blended cold, nonfat milk’s high-protein makeup also helps make a more robust foam, albeit with larger bubbles because of the lack of fat.

What does cold foam taste like?

Whether or not you’ll like cold foam depends on how you take your coffee. Because it’s made with nonfat milk, cold foam might be less flavorful or creamy than what some are used to on their lattes; if nonfat milk tastes watery to you, a flavored cold foam topping from Starbucks or elsewhere might be a better option. If you prefer extra creamy coffee, this might not be the drink for you: Cold foam tends to sit at the top of the beverage and doesn’t incorporate well into the coffee. It’s also not an option for customers who prefer alternative milks such as soy milk.

When did Starbucks start serving cold foam?

Cold foam is a relatively recent addition to Starbucks. A Starbucks representative tells Eater that cold foam originated in 2014 as a component of the Americano con Crema served at the chain’s Seattle Reserve Roastery. It was then rolled out at the company’s Reserve Bar locations in 2017, then across the U.S. and Canada in April 2018 in the form of the Cold Foam Cascara Cold Brew, Cold Foam Cascara Nitro Cold Brew, and the Cold Foam Blonde Iced Cappuccino. Customers can now add it to any Starbucks iced beverage.

These days, people visiting a Starbucks will likely feel bombarded by cold beverages layered with this unsteamed nonfat foam. There’s a reason for that: Cold beverages like cold brew and Refresher juices accounted for more than 80 percent of Starbucks’s beverage growth over the past two years, according to a December 2018 investor call. Those cold beverage sales, in turn, comprise more than 50 percent of the chain’s overall sales — up 37 percent from 2013. That’s a lot of iced lattes and nitro cold brew.

What are the origins of cold foam?

There isn’t an exact timeline for the evolution of foamy nonfat milk as a coffee topping, but Japanese cold beverage brands have trended towards over-the-top foam drinks for the past several years. Around 2012, beer company Kirin created a machine to dispense frozen beer head onto its beverages a la a frozen yogurt machine. Other Japanese companies soon developed similar stunt beer equipment capable of making extra frothy toppings to rival a Guinness. American breweries are now following suit.

Starbucks adding cold foam also seems to have coincided with the rising popularity of cheese tea in the U.S. and its hot custardy cousin Vietnamese egg coffee — both beverages with a striking appearance with a thick float of cream on top of tea or coffee. Starbucks’s salted cream cold foam certainly mimics the saltiness of a cheese tea, a drink that originated in Taiwan and was popularized in mainland China, though cold foam lacks the heft and flavor of the whipped cream cheese mixture.

Greece’s coffee culture can also take some of the credit. The country’s outdoor cafe culture is all about drinking frothy iced coffees. The recipe for Greek frappes dates back to 1957 when a Nescafe representative used a Nesquik shaker to make an iced coffee using sugar, water, and instant coffee. The resulting drink — iced instant coffee with a foamy, milk-free head — became a popular beverage served just about everywhere in Greece. Cappuccino freddos (freddo means cold), also served widely in Greece, are virtually identical to the Starbucks cold foam beverages. The drink uses a cold milk foam topping that’s frothed using special shakers or whisks and poured on thick over the top of iced espresso.

How does Starbucks make its cold foam?

Starbucks baristas pour nonfat milk into a blender with a special blade designed to make its cold foam optimally thick and creamy. For flavored cold foam drinks, pumps of flavoring are added to the milk before it’s frothed.

What’s with the lid?

Iced beverages are typically consumed with a straw (though straws are going out of fashion) or sipped from the side of a cup. However, neither system is ideal for drinking a foamy cold drink. At Starbucks, nitro coffee and cold foam drinks are covered with a special strawless lid with a triangular, thumbprint-sized hole punched on the top. Just like certain varieties of cheese tea lids, the larger opening on the nitro lids are meant to prevent the milk mustache while allowing customers to drink a ratio of both cold foam and coffee sip.

Starbucks credits Emily Alexander, then an engineer in Global Research & Development, with developing the design for the cold foam lid. Initially, the company declared that Alexander’s design would become the new strawless lid for all cold beverages at Starbucks, but the design was later replaced by a strawless lid with a smaller opening for non-nitro and cold foam drinks.

Is Starbucks the only place that serves cold foam?

It may not expressly be called “cold foam,” but there are most definitely places worldwide and in the U.S. serving chilled, frothy milk over ice coffee or espresso. These drinks are sometimes called “iced cappuccinos” — a beverage that wouldn’t be possible without cold, foamy milk — and are particularly popular in European countries. International coffee chain Costa Coffee, the second largest coffee chain in the world behind Starbucks, serves many iced beverages topped with “whipped milk.”

And cold foam is only becoming more common. Local shops like Sycamore Grounds Coffee House in Texas and Astoria, New York’s Greek-owned Sweet Habit are doing their own versions of the iced cold foam cappuccino. The Gong Cha chain also serves a version of salted cream called “milk foam” on top of its teas, that one source says is made with whipped milk, cream, and butter. Most of these versions, of course, lack the foam-optimizing lid, which sort of defeats the purpose.

Can I make it at home?

Sure! Many, many online tutorials demonstrate how to make versions of Starbucks cold foam at home, as well as explanations for a regular iced cappuccino. There are a couple ways to aerate nonfat milk. Some people invest in special milk frothers, but common kitchen tools such as food processors and blenders will do just fine. Eater tested an at-home method using a clean coffee press, which quickly whipped up a thick milk foam.

Some recipes recommend adding heavy cream or additives like xanthan gum, but that shouldn’t be necessary unless the goal is to be low carb or just have a whipped cream topping. When trying to reproduce a specialty Starbucks drink like the salted sweet cream cold foam, some DIYers recommend using a mixture of 2 percent milk and half and half with vanilla and salt.

But, why cold foam?

For fans of hot cappuccinos, the answer here is pretty simple: foam is good and it’s fun to drink. Frothy layers add texture and flavor to hot espresso and coffee drinks, but when hot steamed milk is poured over iced drinks it raises the overall temperature of the beverage and may or may not increase the chances of growing bacteria in the drink. For this reason, many coffee bars will refuse to make customers an iced cappuccino. Cold foam, however, makes the iced cappuccino and actually foamy iced lattes possible.

Laptop squatters, listen up

The world of dining and drinking is an obstacle course wrapped in a labyrinth wrapped in a logic puzzle — it’s full of pitfalls, gray areas, and bewildering questions that really shouldn’t even be questions (How do I find the bathroom?) and yet, somehow, are. Fortunately, your friends at Eater are here to help: Life Coach is a series of simple guides to the arcane rituals of modern dining. Have a question or a quandary you’d like us to tackle? Drop Life Coach a line.

As a college student, I spent a large portion of my days sitting at a coffee shop. When not in class or sleeping, I was most likely found either helming the espresso machine at the student union or haunting the counter, sipping my free 20-ounce shift coffee and waiting for my coworkers to hand off a latte mistake. Caffeine was currency, and the cafe was a convenient student job as much as it was a workspace for completing class assignments: Sometimes the library just isn’t the right atmosphere for writing a paper or highlighting anthropology reading.

These days, not much has changed. I’m still hopelessly committed to drinking multiple cups of coffee per day while writing, except now I do so while typing on a laptop from my desk… or couch or bed. (Don’t judge.) Like many remote workers, I clock in by logging onto the internet each morning. And sometimes, in order to get some real, focused work done without a purring cat laying across your keyboard, it’s necessary to break the routine, get out of the house, and work from a coffee shop.

It’s obvious why coffee shops are the gold standard for telecommuters without a membership to WeWork. Coffee shops always have plenty of caffeine in supply, they often have internet, and they’re generally pretty quiet — but not so silent as to be distracting. They’re also great for short meetings with clients and contacts. However, working from a coffee shop is not as straightforward as it seems. Disrespect for the space has resulted in some businesses deterring so-called “laptop squatters” by covering up electrical outlets and changing WiFi passwords on a daily basis to prevent internet freeloading. In some cases, computer use was all-out banned.

Nevertheless, there is a way for laptop users and coffee shops to live in harmony. From where to sit to the appropriate amount of time to stay, here’s a primer on how to work from a coffee shop without pissing everyone off.

1) Pick the right location

Not all cafes are conducive to a good work environment. Regardless of whether you’re planning to work online or offline, find a cafe that has lots of seating. Ideally that seating is also comfortable and in an area with a moderate noise level. Pick too small of a shop, and it becomes much harder to justify occupying a seat for a longer period of time. It’s also wise to find a shop that not only offers drinks, but also serves a decent food selection to balance out the caffeine.

People working online should also take note of coffee shops that have adequate access to outlets and a strong and reliable internet connection: There’s nothing more annoying than buying a drink “for here,” settling in to do some work, and discovering that the internet has gone out.

2) Come prepared (but not too prepared)

Every so often a photo will surface online of a person lugging a full desktop computer monitor and a tower into a coffee shop, and it’s hard to believe this isn’t some sort of performance art. (Though sometimes it is.) However, it’s a good example of what not to do as a remote worker. Remember, you’re not moving in.

When working in a public setting, you should travel light: Laptop, plugs, a purse or wallet, and any paper or pens you might need. I’d also add to the list a phone cord in the event that the internet is disrupted and you need to temporarily tether to your smartphone. Bring headphones, too, and wear them if you’re planning to listen to music or work on anything with sound. Also, keep your belongings close and don’t spread out over multiple tables — especially if the cafe is busy.

3) Abide by house rules

Whenever we go to someone’s house, we have to adjust to fit that setting. The same goes for coffee shops. They’re places of business with their own rules, and you should abide by them. Some shops, for example, have specific seating areas dedicated to people working on laptops, so that other customers who are just there to relax or have coffee with a friend can have their own space. Some shops limit their hours to people on laptops, who tend to hog tables. Remember to respect and follow those systems. Don’t put a coffee shop employee in the awkward position of having to enforce a rule.

Other rules broadly apply. If a cafe expects patrons to bus their own tables, bus the table. It also goes without saying, but wear headphones and don’t watch anything you wouldn’t watch with your mother in the room. To do otherwise could be weird and disrespectful to everyone else in the establishment.

4) Buy something and reorder often

When you take up space for an extended period of time while using the cafe’s internet, draining the electricity from their outlets, and using the bathroom, you should be paying for that service. At minimum, when working for an hour and a half, it’s appropriate to spend at least $5 at the business with a tip for employees. If you plan to stay longer, make sure that you always have something to eat or drink at your table. Try to make a purchase every hour to hour and a half.

There are some exceptions to this rule, of course: At big chain cafes such as Starbucks, there are policies that allow people to use those spaces for without buying anything, and to occupy them for as long as they want. In these situations, use your best judgement.

5) Don’t expect someone to watch your stuff

There will inevitably be a moment while working at a cafe, possibly after three strong cups of cold brew, when you’ll need to leave your table for a bathroom break. Because remote work often includes using expensive laptops or other computer equipment, there’s usually a wariness that comes with leaving your stuff unaccompanied. It might feel even more daunting if you’ve commandeered that oh-so-conveniently located table near that really good outlet by the window that you love. It’s totally reasonable to feel that way.

When this happens, you have two choices: A) pack up your stuff and awkwardly cart it to the bathroom or B) turn to a neighbor who we’ve never met until now and ask them to watch your stuff. Both are fine choices, but if you do choose option B, remember that you’re asking a lot of a person you’ve never met. They might have to leave soon and are too nice to say no. If you’re planning to take an extended trip to the restroom, surrender your table and pack your bag, rather than put a stranger in an uncomfortable position. Depending on how long you’ve been there, you might even take it as a natural breaking point for moving on to a new location.

6) Don’t take a call in the coffee shop

Unless you expect the call to last under a minute, please for the love of god do not take a phone call in a coffee shop. People may use cafes as workspaces, but it’s not an office and you’re not in a cubicle. If the call is going to take a while, consider: A) answering and asking if you can call the person back B) Taking the call outside but standing in view of your personal items or C) Packing up your things and moving on. This applies to non-business calls, too.

7) Don’t overstay your welcome

Just like at a popular restaurant or bar, coffee shops rely on open tables to serve more customers. If a person walks in and sees that there are no open tables, they might take their business somewhere else. That’s perhaps why so many cafes have adopted an adversarial relationship towards people on laptops. For that reason, it’s important to take an inventory of your surroundings and not overstay your welcome.

If you walk into a cafe and there are barely any open tables, it’s probably not a good place to work for an extended period of time. If your preferred shop starts filling up with too many people as the day goes on, take that as your cue to leave and free up the space for new customers to enjoy. Arguably, the maximum amount of time you should be occupying a coffee shop, even if you’re following all of the above rules, is four hours. Any longer, and you should probably start pitching in for rent.

We don’t control whom — or what — we fall in love with. I fell in love with Starbucks’s Cold Foam Iced Cappuccino

We don’t control whom — or what — we fall in love with. That’s what I’ve learned since accidentally inciting a craze built up over 70 consecutive weeks surrounding a very particular coffee drink: Starbucks’s iced cold foam cappuccino. We also don’t control the outpouring of emotions when something you love is unexpectedly taken from you. In early September, after fevered DMs, back-and-forths with corporate representatives, and over a year of repeat orders, Starbucks PR confirmed it was removing the iced cold foam cappuccino from its register terminals, rendering it nearly impossible to purchase. The news hit hard, to both me and hundreds of my closest internet friends, an online community that unexpectedly, delightfully grew over the past year around a shared love and loss of this drink. Though I’m still deep in the middle stages of blender-whipped grief, I’m only now realizing it wasn’t all about the chilled frothy milk — it was about the people willing to yell right back into their phones about their love for it, too.

I first tried an iced cappuccino topped with cold foam, now offered in multiple iterations as a drink topping, while it was deep in the throes of its massive marketing push last April. Instantly, I was hooked. By whipping skim milk in what I can only gather is a proprietary blender (try it at home and it won’t be as dense), Starbucks ingeniously figured out how to make the worst milk on the market fun. Opt for the standard version of cold foam and there’s no sugar, no syrups, no nothin’: just a nutritious meringue lickable off a sippy-cup lid or, though socially frowned upon, lapped up out of the cup like a baby kitten slurping milk. That cloud of cold foam elevated the iced cappuccino to a perfect drink with just enough coffee and just enough milk, topped with a glorious heaping of novelty. The espresso should be the star, but foam is really what completes it, encapsulating the magic of whirring frozen bananas into fake ice cream or pulling Easy-Bake brownies out as a kid. Somehow this became that and is immediately better for it.

Never a big Starbucks obsessive prior, I joked about becoming a cold foam influencer, getting my friends, a handful of followers, and surprisingly some strangers into the so-called #foamfluenced movement. Now, over a year later, my Instagram inbox is full of hundreds if not thousands of “foamy friends” (as I call ’em) dishing about their coffee that day, tagging me in Starbucks selfies and feeding our mutual milky compulsion.

Still, that’s not the most ludicrous part. While the drink was seemingly simple — espresso, milk, milk — no two Starbucks seemed capable of crafting the iced cold foam cappuccino the same way. The company established its brand of ubiquity by brewing and blending the exact same beloved drinks from coast to coast in strip malls and scenic highways, drive-thrus and Disneyland, but I stumbled upon the iced cold foam cappuccino as Starbucks’s Achilles heel, the one drink that’s never prepared correctly. The drink’s perfection and often lack thereof only fueled the conversations within my Instagram stories feed. My direct-message inbox served as a digital water cooler for us all to check in and discuss that day’s foam, like a support group for how well your crapshoot of a coffee order went. The multitude of possibilities was perfect morning fodder, the ideal distraction to a busy workday that necessitates caffeine.

We formed a legitimate digital clubhouse, a non-gendered Starbucks sorority, one might say, trying to finally nail this order. We celebrated with glee when someone got an extra-dense foam or when pumpkin spice foam appeared (which yes, of course I tried); we reeled en masse upon early reports (in my DMs, natch) that the iced cold foam cappuccino was being removed. Now that it’s officially gone — Now that it’s officially gone — cold foam remains, but the iced cappuccino has disappeared from menus — I feel adrift with my internet besties as we try to fill the void, our bond over this inescapably delicious drink tested by the company that invented it.

I now enter a Starbucks filled with anxiety about not knowing what to order, unaware of how much this drink meant to me until I felt the crushing blow of its deletion across a community I’ve accidentally found myself at the helm of. I’ve fallen into the nexus of a trend I make absolutely no money for — world’s worst influencer! — and (happily!) continue to receive so many foam-related mentions that I’ve had to relegate Starbucks posts to Foamy Fridays, a concept originated by foam fans themselves. (I’ve even started a Facebook group so we can all share foams with each other without having me serve as the omniscient reposter. True foam friendship!)

As we work as a group to crowdsource a replacement for our beloved beverage — grande iced cold foam latte in a venti cup or just an espresso over ice with a buttload of cold foam are frontrunners — it blows my mind that so many people are joined together by a mutual love of floofy skim milk. I have iPhone penpals I’ve never met messaging me about whipped cream foam, food editors tagging me in posts about ramen foam, and strangers explaining the virtues of at-home foam with blenders and canned foams and doo-dads. The internet can be somewhat of an abyss, and while Instagram fans of Disney Parks, my usual journalism beat, comprise what’s easily one of the cozier corners of the platform, there’s a sense of teamwork among the cold foam crowd from our ceaseless attempts to get something done. Something about those feel-good ties feels warmly communal.

I never felt so tapped into a group of like-minded people until I began covering theme parks five years ago. Still, even with a fellowship of Mickey fans, nothing in my career has compared to the camaraderie from fellow foamers that’s now enveloped my daily existence. A car drove past me while I was leaving Disney’s D23 Expo convention in August and a passenger screamed, “WE LOVE FOAM!”; last month, while in the Haunted Mansion’s “stretching room,” I was spooked not by the ride’s ghoulish frights, but by another rider exclaiming over how much he loves the dairy topping.

This enigmatic journey through the skim-milk fog grew into a digital gang of iced espresso obsessives that I feel at home within both digitally and in real life, even if it’s now met its demise. I may never again receive the exact drink I want at Starbucks, but I’ve gotten an entirely new community of friends — and hey, that’s better than a glass of espresso and perfectly frothed nonfat milk.

A caffeinated drink meets alcohol in one can: Haven’t we seen this before?

It seemed like it would never end, but White Claw summer 2019 is slowly coming to a close. Many of us, of course, will still be found knocking back cans of hard seltzer later this year alongside cranberry sauce or Christmas ham, but in a drastic pivot in terms of taste and marketing, alcohol companies have quietly laid the groundwork for the next break-the-internet trendlet: hard coffee.

Mixing coffee and booze is admittedly a centuries-old pairing. The saccharine White Russians and espresso martinis often made with coffee-flavored liqueur came and went; more recently, the craft beer revolution has unleashed a slew of stouts and porters that cribbed their roasted, almost chocolate-like tasting notes from coffee beans.

But following the second coming of flavored malt beverages, and fueled by the double-digit growth of chilled coffee consumption, companies like MillerCoors and Pabst Brewing have begun to look to those refrigerated Illy cans for inspiration. Now, they’re answering a question few other than the second-wave coffee cognoscenti have thought to ask: What if bottled Starbucks Frappuccinos, but with an alcoholic bent?

For those of you still sipping on your iced lattes without the other buzz, here’s a breakdown of the hard coffee wave.

What is hard coffee?

Like hard seltzers and hard sodas, many drinks that fall under this fledgling “hard coffee” category are flavored malt beverages. Typically, an alcohol base made with malt is mixed with cold brew or coffee extract and sugar; depending on the brand, milk and/or other flavorings like vanilla or chocolate will be added, too.

Among the current contenders in the ever-expanding hard coffee sphere are Bad Larry’s Cold Hard Coffee, the alleged first prepackaged version, which debuted in May 2017. Then, this past July, PBR released its take on hard coffee, with a sweet, milky recipe that seems like a sauced version of Rhode Island’s coffee milk. And most recently, brewing giant MillerCoors teamed up with third-wave coffee trailblazer La Colombe for a collaboration on two premium varieties — Vanilla and Black hard cold brew, both brewed with medium-roasted Colombian and Brazilian coffee beans — that wouldn’t seem out of place at your local Whole Foods.

A number of recent entrants into the modern-era boozy coffee sphere, however, haven’t restricted themselves to the flavor market beverage market. Cafe Agave uses a fermented agave base for its line of spiked cold brew coffees, which all round out at 12.5 percent ABV, putting them in canned cocktail territory. And Jägermeister, no stranger to caffeinated alcohol, recently announced its own 33 percent ABV cold brew coffee liqueur, made with Arabica beans and, per brand tradition, a bouquet of herbs and other flora.

Why is hard coffee a thing now?

When it comes to alcoholic innovation, there’s a long history of brewing and distilling companies piggybacking on trends in the non-alcoholic sector. Sofia Colucci, vice president of innovation at MillerCoors, said that its collaboration with La Colombe was born out of America’s unquenchable thirst for cold coffee: According to Nielsen, over 1,000 new coffee products have debuted since August 2018; 119 of them fell under ready-to-drink, cold brew, or iced coffee varieties.

According to Euromonitor senior beverage analyst Matthew Barry, coffee is specifically following White Claw’s lead “in order to offer innovative and healthier alcoholic beverage options.” But instead of merely replicating the success of hard seltzer, which was partly driven by the drink’s health-conscious “halo effect,” some breweries are looking for new ways to break out from the sinking beer game. “With beer [sales] sort of flat to declining — when talking about actual beer itself — we sort of realized we can’t forever just make beer and survive long term,” says John Newhouse, brand manager at Pabst.

Wait, isn’t mixing caffeine and alcohol dangerous?

Who can forget the great Four Loko pandemonium of 2010? Beyond the dozens of college students who were hospitalized after drinking caffeine-laden cans of Four Loko, which also contained upwards 12 percent ABV, a handful of deaths were connected to people ingesting the caffeinated tallboys. Several states banned the product; the F.D.A. mandated in 2010 that Four Loko and three other companies had to remove caffeine from their drinks in order to stay on the market. More recently, a review in the Journal of Studies on Alcohol and Drugs found that compared to drinking caffeine-free booze, consuming vodka-Red Bulls and Jägerbombs (dropping a shot of Jägermeister into a beer) increases the risk of injury.

All of this is to say that, to avoid repeating history and potential lawsuits, several brands ensured that their drinks’ caffeine levels would be below 50 mg — less than an espresso shot. (Bad Larry’s is an outlier, boasting a hefty 180 mg of caffeine, which is still less than the 235 mg of caffeine found in a tall Starbucks Pike Place Roast coffee.) Whether crushing a few hard coffees can result in an increased likelihood of bar brawls or hospitalization is to determined.

So how does hard cold brew taste?

Most of these drinks, like PBR’s Hard Coffee and La Colombe’s Hard Cold Brew, have only rolled out so far in select markets, minimizing the sample size of current reviews. For those who have managed to get their hands on a can or two, reviews have skewed positive. PBR’s Hard Coffee is basking in surprisingly lavish praise on Untappd as well as in write-ups, with reviewers describing it as a sweet “boozy Yoo-hoo.” Meanwhile, Kate Bernot at the Takeout found La Colombe’s Vanilla Hard Cold Brew to be a middle ground between the PBR’s sweetness and the brand’s Black flavor.

But not all are guaranteed to supplant your weekend iced coffee routine: Bad Larry’s currently holds a 1.6 rating on Untappd. One review describes the drink as “what I think coffee beer back wash [sic] would be like.”

When should I be drinking this thing?

Good question, especially since most of us have been trained by society to drink coffee in the morning and alcohol in the evening. These drinks understandably will be a boon for those looking to up their day-drinking game. But for everyone else, it seems that hard coffee will likely be reserved for weekend or evening occasions. (The companies themselves, however, are still trying to figure out when customers are actually drinking their products.) Echoing La Colombe’s youthspeak marketing campaign “Rally Like a GrownUp,” founder Todd Carmichael envisioned hard coffee as fitting in easily along the brunch or tailgating crowds: “This isn’t a get loaded on spring break drink.” Others, however, have owned their drinks’ role as an “opportunity to replace a vodka-Red Bull at 9 p.m.”