Melinda,

A great article, thanks for linking it.

There's something beautiful about the counter-Starbucks culture
that's kicking in here. Now that Starbucks/CafeNero/etc. have hauled
coffee (or, at least, mainstream coffee) out into the utter wasteland
of McDonalds tastelessness, it's perhaps inevitable that there is a
counter-movement to rediscovering the delicacy and elegance of
afternoon tea. Though, of course, it never went away. It's merely
having the "poker treatment", in which high-profile individuals are
claiming allegiance to it.


My favourite paragraph from the article:

With the afternoon tea ritual, things are different. Tea is grown up.
It is slow and non-careerist and English. It is Alan Bennett and
Morrissey to coffee's Jessica Simpson. "Coffee doesn't have a ritual
attached to it, it doesn't have any of the lovely, 'Shall I be mother?'
stuff associated with it," says style-watcher Peter York, who is
partial to extended tea and millefueille afternoon teas at the Wolseley
restaurant, along from the Ritz in Piccadilly. "With coffee you want to
rush it. With tea you want to sit, you want the accompaniments, you
want to enjoy the long-drawn-outness, the community, the sharing out of
a pot, the rather childish, 'I'll halve my cake, if you halve yours'."


Toodlepip,

Hobbes