Awkward cafe moment #27, the latest in a series: a customer of a certain age at an inner-north warehouse cafe has poured her caffe latte, served in a cappuccino-style tulip cup, into a water glass, presumably because she likes her coffee in Duralex.
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She makes the unhappy discovery that a cup full of milky coffee doesn't fill a Duralex: the high-water mark is only about four-fifths of the way up the glass, less once the microfoam settles.
After drinking it, she calls the waitperson and asks for another: "In a glass, please, because I'm paying $3 (more like $4, actually) and this isn't full: look." She holds the latte-stained tumbler up as evidence.
Instead of summoning the Director of Coffee to explain how the ratio of textured milk to coffee is calibrated every day for the tulip cup depending on the age of the roast and the weather, the girl waitperson is very obliging: "Of course. We'll make you another one. We use cups because glasses break too often." (They do spontaneously shatter on top of espresso machines from time to time, especially the fluted Duralex Picardie type. You can heat them, but it's better not to stack them.)
Multiply this scene across cafes and dining situations: it's the mismatch of customer expectations and chef, barista or owner aspiration to present their food and drink in the best way possible, from their point of view. But the customer is always right, even when they want a carefully selected and roasted Ethiopia Abaya drowned in too much hot milk.
Our attachment to caffe latte in a Duralex glass has deep cultural roots.
You still find them stacked two-deep on top of the espresso machine at Pellegrini's in Bourke Street, where they have been since the middle of last century. The charm at Pellegrini's was partly its retro feel: the red leather diner stools, the black-and-white-tiled floor and the Duralex glasses were stylish – and authentic – in a timeless way for anyone who'd grown up surrounded by the suburban design crimes of the 1970s.
The old Black Cat in Brunswick Street had a hand in this – sipping a latte from a Duralex glass at a Laminex table there was as hip as Melbourne got in the early 1980s. Then the Marios – Maccarone and Di Pasquale – sealed the Duralex deal when they opened Marios in 1984, marrying the Black Cat's hipness with Pellegrini's old-school authenticity – and caffe latte served in a glass.
