Fuck Murky Coffee

Looks like not only The Strand but now Murky Coffee has earned my ire. Today's Washington Post reports that some guy from Brooklyn ordered an iced espresso at Arlington's most obnoxious indie coffee house. The barista apparently refused to oblige the customer, so he had to order a triple espresso and a cup of ice, which the barista didn't want to sell him but grudgingly did.

I have the same problem ordering iced tea anywhere in the UK outside of London. At Starbucks across the North I have to order a large tea and a cup of ice, and the tea never cools properly because I'm never given enough ice. It's annoying. Still, I put up with it because iced tea isn't particularly popular in Britain--although sweet, canned iced teas are becoming increasingly popular. In the US, however, where even Charles Dickens noticed 160 years ago that the natives love nothing more than ice in their beverages, this behavior is unpardonable. It's so disgustingly hot in most of North America that we ought to be able to order pretty much anything on ice.

So I agree with the aggrieved customer, who posted this rant against Murky and their holier-than-thou baristas. Really now, if people want to order fancy coffees in a coffee house and then dump them over ice--even if this degrades the quality of the coffee--they should be free to do so. As for Murky, the place reeks of pretension, and I wouldn't recommend that anyone go there. There are a couple of Caribous in Arlington, and they'll do. Unlike most folks, I don't adore independent book stores, coffee houses, record shops, and so on simply because they're independent; I only go to independent shops if I like them. And now I have another reason to dislike Murky.