Coffee
Coffee is one of the big great couples (with tea).
I am an avid coffee enthusiast although—like with everything else—have more interest as a dilettante who enjoys more than he follows the real practitioners of the art, those who brew their own blends, prepare their cups according to various techniques, are mindful of pressures and temperatures. I admire systematically everybody who cares about their coffee, who find themselves inside the drink rather than around. One of my favourite activity is to sit with someone who likes to speak about coffee, typically with one that they have just prepared, and let a world of senses and craft unravels which has no deeper meaning nor bigger tension than that: what is between us on the table. I like how they always apologize, that the water was too alkaline, the grinding too coarse, the percolation too rapid, the foam too bubbly, the texture too fluidish, the color too guinnessish, the taste too expected, the flavour too unimaginative... the more they are frustrated, the fuller I become of their coffee. When they comment on other's coffees, the trend typically reverses: "it is not so bad", "the bitterness is quite right", "she hurried the extraction but because the temperature was too high, it came out just punchy enough"... They also have an unending collection of the worst coffee places they know and coffee experiences they had there. Unfortunately, they are few such people. Many of them are Italians.
I, instead, like to write haikus for the coffee table.