Wow, there’s another new restaurant in Kendall Square; I guess the tech economy is overheated! It’s a Sebastians. No apostrophe. Wonder why they do that. Anyway they serve salads and crêpes. But they call them crepes. I guess spelling is not their strong suit. If only it had been a Wagamama’s.
In any case, I have a ritual with new restaurants that are open in the morning. I order a cup of black coffee in the mildest roast they have. I have been drinking black coffee since I was 14. When you drink a lot of black coffee, you tend to want a mild roast. When coffee when upscale/European in big American cities in the 80s (before going nationwide in the 90s), the roasts became much darker because European coffee styles, except for espresso, usually have milk. So the dark roast is ok because the coffee is diluted.
But if you drink a lot of black coffee, that won’t work. (Why won’t it work? You will kill your stomach. Your breath will become noxious. But do what you want, I’m not your mother.)
In Boston, the only chains that really understand this are Dunkin’ Donuts and Au Bon Pain. All of the Dunkin’ coffee is pretty mild, and ABP has something called Morning Blend. Outside of Boston, Tim Horton’s is good, too, but you have to drive to Rhode Island (or Canada!) for that, at least for now.
Sebastians’s milder roast is ok. Too roasted for my taste, but it might do in a pinch. The bad ones are Starbucks and Rebecca’s. Their mildest coffees pretty much require milk.
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Coffee puts the system under the strain of metabolizing a deadly acid-forming drug, depositing its insoluble cellulose, which cements the wall of the liver, causing this vital organ to swell to twice its proper size. In addition, coffee is heavily sprayed. (Ninety-two pesticides are applied to its leaves.) Diuretic properties of caffeine cause potassium and other minerals to be flushed from the body.
All this fear went away when I quit, and it was a book that inspired me to do it called The Truth About Caffeine by Marina Kushner. There are five things I liked about this book:
1) It details–thoroughly–the ways in which caffeine may damage your health.
2) It reveals the damage that coffee does to the environment. Specifically, coffee was once grown in the shade, so that trees were left in place. Then sun coffee was introduced, allowing greater yields but contributing to the destruction of rain forests. I haven’t seen this mentioned anywhere else.
3) It explains how best to go off coffee. This is important. If you try cold turkey, as most people probably do, the withdrawal symptoms will likely drive you right back to coffee.
4) Helped me find a great resource for the latest studies at CaffeineAwareness.org
5) Also, if you drink decaf you won’t want to miss this special free report on the dangers of decaf available at http://www.soyfee.com