About every two years I come to Hyannis to visit my father, who has lived here for over 30 years. This town hosts the largest business strip on Cape Cod that attracts tourists from Europe and typically the East Coast. There are a few coffee places that serve an actual espresso from a manual machine, where the barista must be trained to measure the coffee grounds and perform her magic.
Contrast this minimum requirement with the common knowledge in the Greater Boston area that the best coffee in the world can be found at Dunkin Donuts. They serve coffee in fine styrofoam cups. The servers add your cream and sugar for you behind the counter apparently in order to cut down on milk spoilage and decrease the chance of spreading disease between customers handling milk dispensers. I had this explained to me by a server. I also asked if I was being served half and half, milk, or some non-dairy creamer. She wasn't sure, but I imagine that creamer doesn't spoil, and probably kills germs. She told me that it's called cream and that is all she knows. I could be making this all up, since, as I was expecting the best cup of coffee ever, from this highly educated City, that a dark spell of confusion was cast over me, going into complete shock, a stunned silence, after I had my first sip of this donut swill. Coupled with a few donut holes to obliterate the bitter-sweet taste, and a few moments later, I regained my composure. I sat dumbfounded to think that as Bostonians drink this stuff en masse, that like Seattle and San Francisco, who have been thoroughly overrun by Starbucks that these corresponding liberal bastions, along with Boston had been taken over by mediocre coffee dispensaries. I started to wonder and the spell of the donut holes wore off that maybe there was a capitalist conspiracy to poison the liberal centers of intelligentsia in our country with brown swill. The only consolation for me is knowing that at least Starbucks tries to make real espresso and lets you serve your own cream and sugar.
But that bar is still far too low. A real espresso is hard to find in most parts of the world. Considering that Italians run a distant second in settlement in Massachusetts in the past hundred years or so, it is possible to find a cafe that actually knows where espresso comes from and how to make it. Caffé e Dolci is just such a place. With its air conditioned interior to beat the humidity, as well as its shady sidewalk seats (where I happily sat), the macchiato was exceptional from start to finish. A fine woodsy flavor met the back of my tongue followed by a slight dark berry after taste.
There are other places to get a good espresso on this strip, and I will visit a couple of these places before I leave. Even out of Salem, my son (from Seattle) found a great coffee house on the way to the highway. So, there is hope.
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