Changing Taste

“They just say that because they want it all to themselves.” My friend explained as he pours himself a cup. At the time, no one else our age was drinking coffee, but he loved it. The doubious claims we were told about it stunting your growth didn’t stop him from drinking it. But the flavor immediately killed it for me. I preferred my chocolate milk.

Thinking back on it. It’s rather embarassing. I basically would only have a big cup of chocolate milk for breakfast and not much else until lunch. I don’t know how I managed that. I was incredibly picky eater in this time too. It left an impression on my friends that I grew up with. I was the kid that preferred cheese or pepperoni pizzas. Beyond that was too much. I would pick out peppers or other meats if they were added I had no other options. Once I was able to get out and about more with a drivers license and some friends, I was slowly being introduced to new flavors. Getting used to eating fish, pho, etc. I had a group of Filipino friends who would introduce me to various asian foods that my family had not tried until I introduced it to them. Then my best friend and I managed to save up and do a trip to Japan. The first couple of days we were running into foods that were very surprising to my taste buds. Even if I liked the food, I would lose my appetite from new flavors or textures I was not used to eating. It took some time to adapt during our trip, but eventually we found a few staples (usually soba) that we could go grab when we were tired and didn’t want to search out something too surprising. But there were many times where we picked (rather randomly, we did not have good resources for picking out food and this was semi-intentional) places to eat and we did not necessarily have familiar options. And I ended up eating something that I was just not familiar with.

It was a lot of fun. And I think that trip triggered a lot of growth that happened slowly afterwards. I still very much enjoyed chocolate milk in the morning at that time. This is to the disappointment of my mother who has been running a coffee business for many years. It was on one of my trips that I was so jetlagged that I just gave in and got a coffee from the convenience store. It was incredibly sweet canned coffee drunk in hopes of it helping me through the jetlag. I was waking up at 4 in the morning and then being incredibly tired in the afternoon. Just needed something to push me back to last a few more hours. Gradually, I tried other less sweet coffees with mixed appreciation. My partner would make me a coffee out of those little drip packs. You place it over your cup and you get a single drip coffee. It was so bad we’d usually fill it halfway with milk. Then we found our bean guy. He sourced beans from all over and you can get a bag for a decent price. We went for his suggested cospa (cost-performance). He roasts the beans when you buy them. I bought all the things needed to do pour overs. And we kept coming back to him for more. Trying random ones while discovering our favorites. I’ve gone from very strongly not liking coffee to being a bit of a snob about it. I cannot do those big cheap container coffee. My partner also struggles to drink those pour over packs that she used to buy.

Luckily, my mom is also opinionated about coffee. She visited Japan for the first time this year. While I slowly started drinking coffee before I moved here, it was never something we bonded together over. Her travel goal for the trip was to check out a bunch of cafes and try good coffee. I took her to our bean guy. I bought the same beans as her so I could try what sounded interesting to her (it was very good). She found our local chain of coffee as well and was frequenting there grabbed some blends from there. Now I am messaging her about things I hear about coffee. Like the pouring from higher height when doing a pour-over. What a weird thing, but it does seem to change the flavor. I do not know if I would’ve started drinking coffee as much if I had not left. I feel like I would’ve gotten into tea more. I definitely cannot handle the amount of chocolate milk I used to drink.