Wednesday, August 31, 2011

There's A Girl In My Coffee!

Last week, for a couple of days, my Mom took up residence at the city's latest mall. Aunt and I accompanied her. On the first day, they went ahead to the mall while I joined them less than 30 minutes later. I rang my mother about 10 times but she only heard it the eleventh time. By this time, 45 minutes had passed and I had wended my way through three floors with a cup of lukewarm coffee in hand - I don't usually drink coffee but use it when I need to get rid of a headache.

When I told them I had had coffee, they immediately wanted some themselves and looked at me accusingly - then I told them that I had come more than an hour ago and I had got a headache from the number of futile calls I'd made trying to locate them. Then they looked contrite and I took them down for some coffee.

My coffee came from another cafe and though I asked for plain South Indian filter coffee, I got some frothy mess to which even two packets of sugar didn't make a difference, so I took them to another cafe which had some alluring chocolate eats as well. We bought a brownie for the three of us and ordered two lattes.

I was busy chatting with them when the person at the counter called out to me to come get the coffee but his colleague had still not finished making it. So I stayed there and watched the people go by - within two minutes, I'd got my coffee and voila, this was what I saw in one of the cups.


I didn't notice how he did it, whether he did it with the little jug of milk itself or whether he used a brush or some other implement. That set me off on a voyage of YouTube where I saw many videos that showed baristas making hearts, leaves and associated flora, and yes, even some fauna, in the cup, all by pouring the milk in stippling motions above the coffee cup. I only had my mobile phone to photograph this with so that explains the size and the quality of the picture. A thrilling experience for me which I'd like to share with you all because my experience of coffee art is limited to hearts and flora.

Naturally, we all felt sad that the drinker (I don't remember who, Mom or Aunt) had to stir it to add the sugar. The girl dissolved into the coffee but next time I go there, I'm going to try and get them to give me the same design, headache or no!


This is my entry this week to Susan's Black and White Wednesday.


22 comments:

  1. This is awesome. I've never see or heard of anything like this.

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  2. I am not a coffee drinker and not aware of flora and fauna but that girl is pretty neat.

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  3. I have never heard of such coffee art, must be some high faluting place where the barrista was majorly smitten by you.

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  4. Deepika, Indo, quite a thrill, isn't it?
    Bong Mom, ha ha ha, was he? He didn't try to draw MY pic in the coffee!

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  5. Wow.. very nicely done! :)

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  6. Thats amazing, I've only seen the flora and fauna coffee art here US aside, this takes the cake, though!

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  7. wow, that is amazing, I have never seen anything like it, Heart yes, may be with whipped cream or chocolate powder. This is simply superb.

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  8. I have stencil for coffee art but I never tried ,maybe I will try now,awesome click

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  9. So now it's nt just your soup but your coffee that's alive too. :)

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  10. Hey, never saw a girl in coffee, just hearts and leaves. This must be more difficult.. definitely a thing of beauty :)

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  11. Sra .. I'd read/seen snaps about such art on the net but have not experienced anything like this yet. Does make me wonder ... so do they insist on a person's ability to draw well when employing them? :-)

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  12. Sra,
    I have come across hearts/fauna/leaf arts on my coffee cup but never like this ..This is pure magic..hugs and smiles

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  13. That's pretty cool. ;-)

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  14. A beautiful example of latte art!

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  15. Nice, but it's not black and white!

    Sui

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  16. I want to say what everyone else said. LOL on Aparna's comment of now your coffee coming Alive too. BTW, what is with moms and cell phones? Or has it something to do with the noise level in a mall that makes the cell phone ring redundant? My parents were and sometimes still are like that.
    Though I have to say, nowadays when they leave the house they forward the home phone on to the cell phone and are pretty quick to pick up. Ofcourse, sometimes, they forget to unforward it and misplace the cell phone!

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  17. Laavanya, Ann, Priya, Notyet100, Aparna, La, thanks all of you!
    Sharmila, I doubt it, it looks like a different game altogether, and there are stencils, as Notyet said ...
    Jaya, Paz, Simona, isn't it really? Lucky to have come across it!
    Sui, the event accepts sepia pix so I'm hoping this will make the cut.
    Desisoccermom, I think it's both moms and malls - my mom never seems to answer her phone and I doubt she has it on her all the time, but I could be mistaken.

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  18. That is amazing!! I too would have been loath to stir and would probably have tried to see how the girl's hair style changed as the coffee was carefully drunk.

    Great photo!

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  19. Ha ha I can imagine the looks they gave you when they heard you had coffee and not them :-) I usually ( always) get a head ache in a mall especially in Indian malls were they music is so loud ( and the music they play is not at all to my taste)
    Here we have cup shapes but I have never ever seen a beautiful shape like this, you should check it out how they do it next time :-)

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  20. the barista was totally flirting w/ you!

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  21. Elizabeth, that's interesting, I never thought of that! Thanks.
    Happy, I don't think there was any music playing, just the general noise. If there is some product launch, then there is music.
    The Cooker, I went back there to show The Spouse, met the guy who did it (didn't notice the other day, actually), that guy seemed quite thrilled and did another picture for us of the girl - in someone else's coffee.

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  22. We anthropomorphize everything. Why not coffee? Very cool shot, Sra. (Running behind w/ comments; today's gallery w/ be up later today.) Thx for this great BWW shot.

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