Do you have real coffee?

Once, a few months ago a local Kashgar visitor came to our cafe. He wanted real coffee. However, he took one step into our cafe, saw our grinders and expressed his utter disgust “you use those pathetic lowly grinders? how can you make coffee with those grinders? There is no way you can make real coffee with those grinders.” He then refused to even taste any of our coffees and ordered hot chocolate instead.

The contrast was the tourists that visit Kashgar, who generally walk into our cafe, take one sniff of the coffee aroma and say “ohhh…real coffee, we’ll take two of those”
When we met a tourist on the street he inquired “do you guys have real coffee? is there real coffee in Kashgar?”
we hesitated to answer “well, i mean, our grinders…well…”
“Oh you grind the beans first? Ohh we are coming there for sure. We are really missing real coffee”

Yes, that’s right we serve freshly ground coffee in Kashgar. First we grind it, then we brew it with either a drip coffee maker, a french press or an italian coffee maker. It all depends on how strong you would like it. We even serve a sea salt coffee (in the dessert city of Kashgar), which as our customers are finding out, is surprisingly addictive.

To a certain local Kashgar resident, our coffee is primitive. However, I believe the majority of people sympathize with our customers who walk in wide-eyed after touring Kashgar and say “I need a coffee”
When we ask “which one?” The answer is something like “uhhh, ermm, well uhh this one..uhh. Yah, this one.”

Note: This article contributed to our blog from Gallery Cafe in Kashgar when they left from Kashgar middle of  last summer 2011. We missed Gallery Cafe!


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