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| - For someone who drinks as much coffee as I do in as many cafés as possible, it's rare for a café to truly surprise me. Pourquoi Pas did, and in a very good way.
It started with ordering a latte. I was met with a simple question: what kind of milk? The options that followed were not the "skim, 2%, whole" that I'd expected, though, but rather, "house-made almond/coconut, soy, or cow's milk". Hearing "lait de vache" come across, with a slight prickliness to it, caught me off guard. (Of course I know milk comes from cows, but never when ordering a drink does that fact come to my attention.) I stumbled. I fumbled. "Regular, you know, um, milk." Herp de derp, smooth move, Katie.
After tripping over my obviously non-vegan beverage order (callous carnivore as I am), I looked at the menu more closely and noticed that cow's milk carries an extra surcharge, and is indicated by a weepy broken heart on the chalkboard. I was tickled by their apparent display of ethics (and judgment?), and determined to try their lait maison the next time, so I could be a cool and compassionate coffee snob, too. I also noticed that their standard coffee was an Aeropress, which gets props from me (I love my home Aeropress), and also noticed the striking lack of other options on the menu. This is, uncontestedly, an espresso bar. A one-trick pony, perhaps, but that one trick is a showstopper.
The latte set before me -- made with creamy dairy goodness stolen from the mouths of bleating calves at their mothers' teats -- was phenomenal. Perfectly balanced, not bitter in the least, and made with a perfect microfoam swirled into lovely latte art. Mmmmm.
The next time at Pourquoi Pas, not even a week later, I tried their house almond and coconut milk, and was impressed. It made great foam, and had a rich but sweet nutty flavor. But, for all that, even with the added bonus of self-righteousness for not exploiting our bovine friends, I regretted not getting cowmilk. Sweet, delicious, calorific, uncompassionate cow's milk. I'll placate my conscious by imagining that the extra charge goes toward buying the most wonderful, single-origin, free-range, fair-trade, grass-fed, eco-conscious milk from the happiest cows in Quebec. Or one can hope.
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