Does Piccolo matter?

When you go to a traditional Czech restaurant or a cafe and study their menu, you may find a list of coffee-based beverages you have never heard of before. The most intriguing ones include Vienna Coffee (coffee with whipped cream), Algerian Coffee (coffee with whipped cream and egg liquor) and Turkish Coffee (coffee with ground coffee at the bottom of the cup).  Should you order a presso,  expect something like lungo, and if you want to experiment with a piccolo, you might end up with a plain espresso but also a ristretto.

Czech coffee lovers have had it with the inconsistencies in coffee terminology and typology. In 2010, a coffee consultancy called Kávový klub (Coffee Club), was founded “as a response to the need to promote knowledge about fine preparation of coffee in cafes as well as at homes in the Czech Republic.” They launched a popular campaign called “Piccolo does not exist” with the ambition to eradicate piccolo as well as other instances of “nonsense” and establish a new coffee order.

There is no such thing as piccolo, they say.

“There is no variation to espresso, there is no piccolo, no small or large espresso. There is only espresso. The volume of an espresso is 30 ± 5 ml, the recommended extraction time is 20 to 30 seconds and the pressure it is made under is approximately 9 bar. –WBC 2012 Help us reinstate a coffee culture.”

Seeing their poster for the first time, I immediately thought of Magritte’s picture of a pipe that says “This is not a pipe”. Magritte’s picture is witty and unsettling and makes one reflect on the relationship between a physical object and its representation. The campaign’s depiction of what is an espresso lacks that kind of sophistication as it defines espresso in an authoritative and normative way. The interesting part is that it unintentionally invites a viewer to experience a dissonance between knowledge, language and the perceived world of things: what we know and how we talk about it does not necessarily correspond to our experience. (If I’ve already seen, ordered and drank something called piccolo, it exists, but what if it actually was an espresso?) Campaign organizers should not be surprised at how many people now jokingly (yet proudly) demand piccolos or even consciously offer them to guests. Partially, perhaps, it is simply because our brain has trouble processing negative declarative statements, such as the notorious “Do not imagine a pink elephant!” But the issue is more complex.

This is a pink elephant in a room.

For a long time, anthropologists have been dealing with a similar problem: how to study phenomena such as spirits and spirit possession without applying our own bias. Just because western science cannot prove the existence of spirits, we cannot assume that a non-western person possessed by a spirit should be regarded as psychotic. Consider the Hauka movement in Niger, which was documented by the French ethnologist Jean Rouch in a short documentary called Mad Masters (Les maîtres fous, 1955). The members became possessed by British Colonial administrators and, while in trance, mimicked some of their ceremonies. (You can watch the video on Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gUilOCTqPC4 and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c8FR85eR-ec.)

Anthropologists have tried to study and understand the world, rendering importance to all kinds of knowledge and beliefs. To do that, they needed to question their own tools, methods and biases and devote themselves to giving voice to all forms of life, belief, and knowledge, especially the endangered ones – even if they are as tiny as a piccolo (which means small) .

Interestingly, I found a piccolo in East London and here’s what the “natives” are saying about it:

More documentation of piccolo. By the way, does machiato exist or is it macchiato?

My 2-year-old God-son loves coffee – He loves playing with it, smelling it, moving it in “huuuuuge scoops,” and most of all, he loves to “make” it for all family members. His barista skills include filling up filter cup, tampering coffee, pressing the espresso machine button, and “cleaning up the mess” he leaves behind. When the coffee’s done, he demands to drink it even though he knows he isn’t old enough. Sometimes, he’s allowed to lick a spoon that’s been dipped in coffee. He claims it’s very good and even makes the “hmmmm” sound to express his connoisseurship.

Trying to tackle the question of how to think of taste and the experience of taste, I couldn’t have a better case study. Coffee becomes an experience before it becomes a result of a contact of the liquid with taste buds. My nephew never extends his neck to reach for food as much as when he’s trying to lick a coffee spoon. Before he can taste coffee or understand the rituals around it, he has experiences that create and shape his desire.

“Becoming a marihuana user”

Howard Becker described the role that learning plays in the creation of experience. In “Becoming a marihuana user” (1953), he argues that learning to get high requires learning proper techniques by imitating others, learning to recognize the symptoms of marijuana, and learning to enjoy them. Becker points out that the experience of being high requires user’s active effort to recognize the symptoms caused by marijuana and to consciously connect them to the drug and to his or her previous experience. Becker says:

… being high consists of two elements: the presence of symptoms caused by marihuana use and the recognition of these symptoms and their connection by the user with this use of the drug. It is not enough, that is, that the effects be present; they alone do not automatically provide the experience of being high. The user must be able to point them out to himself and consciously connect them with his having smoked marihuana before he can have this experience. Otherwise, regardless of be actual effects produced, he considers that the drug has had no effect on him; “I figured it either had no effect on me or other people were exaggerating its effect on them, you know. I thought it was probably psychological, see.” Such persons believe that the whole thing is an illusion and that the wish to be high leads the user to deceive himself into believing that something is happening when in fact, nothing is. They do not continue marihuana use, feeling that “it does nothing” for them.

Bruno Latour, who is equally fascinating as he is challenging to social scientists, proposes that we see the body not as a substance, but an articulation of differences and a potentiality for learning to be affected. In his essay on “How to talk about the body” (2004) , Latour suggests that we think of the body as an

interface that becomes more and more describable as it learns to be more and more affected by more and more elements. The body is thus not a provisional residence of something superior – an immortal soul, the universal or thought – but what leaves a dynamic trajectory by which we learn to register and become sensitive to what the world is made of.

This is in opposition to a more traditional way of thinking about the body as a physical space where the immaterial mind is located. This division comes from René Descartes who divided the human into res extensa and res cogitans – the extended thing and the thinking thing, the corporeal substance and the mental substance. From this separation follows the type of thinking that sees the body as governed by the mind, or sees a conflict between the desires of the body and of the mind.

Cartesian Subject

Latour does not separate between the two. The body is an interface with a trajectory. Learning and experience can only happen through the body when the subject is “put into motion.” Only when it stops being indifferent can the subject be affected by differences and be “articulate.” My nephew’s curiosity has already made him articulate about the smell and feeling of coffee as well as to the ritual around it.

Curiouser and curiouser

In her book Service Included, Phoebe Damrosch describes the philosophy of Chef Keller, the chef in the famous New York restaurant The French Laundry, and his “law of diminishing returns,” and “abundant extravagance,”

in which he reduces the size of his many courses to make room for a variety of flavors and textures. At the French Laundry, he constructs his menu in order to give only enough to “satisfy your appetite and pique your curiosity,” enough to have you beg for “just one more bite.” The other side of this law is the abundance of extravagance. “I want people to know what foie gras is all about,” he writes. “I go overboard with truffles and caviar too, so that people who have perhaps only eaten truffles in stingy quantities can taste them and say ‘Oh, now I understand.’”

The law of diminishing returns that Chef Thomas Keller follows is based on the realization that an excess of stimuli may lead to habitualization when the subject can no longer perceive and be affected by differences. Therefore, there needs to be space for curiosity. On the other hand, “abundant extravagance” gives the subject enough stimuli to learn to recognize their specific effects. There’s exclusivity as well as generosity – a well-proven formula.

A Mad Tea-Party in Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland

Who knows what goes on in the head and the body of a two-year-old when he’s playing with coffee. My guess is, both the law of diminishing returns and abundant extravagance are at work. He gets to participate in the full extravagance of the ritual and through his enjoyment of it, he expresses that he understands. But he, for sure, is growing “curiouser and curiouser.”

Related reading:

The Coursera course on The New Nordic Diet offers a lot of information on how taste is acquired, on taste learning curves and how they can be improved. They also mention various fascinating research projects on taste, diet and health. More information on that here: http://newnordicfood.org/projects/food-children/.

It’s Monday so I’ve decided to bring a light personal story of how I became a Top Chef for a day.

I have a secret career as an actress. I’ve never taken acting classes, never had a real acting job, but I’ve been going to auditions for TV ads for the last 10 years or so, and I’ve gone from extras, to featured extras, to minor roles, and I even said a line once.

In 2014, I auditioned for a role in a TV ad for M6, a French mobile company. It was for a role of a character in the “Farmer Wants a Wife” reality show. I got called back and as I was auditioning, the director asked me to try another role – a contestant in the “Top Chef” reality show. I got the role and it was fun to wear chef’s uniform once again, like I did during my fieldwork in a kitchen of a high-end restaurant. Sometimes, life just makes things come together in the sweetest ways.

You can watch the ad here:

It’s all about experience for the modern man and woman. We are a new human species – homo experiens, the experiencing man.

Google Ngram Viewer shows an increase in the frequency of the use of the word “experience,” compared to, for example, the decline in the frequency of the word “taste,” “delight,” and “pleasure.” Random observation or is there more to it?

Experience has become a part of personal economy and identity and functions as a resource which grants authority, truth and authenticity. (1)

But what is experience? Can we produce and buy it as a product and a commodity?

According to Raymond Williams(2), since the 18^th century, the word experience has been used in two different senses:

1. “as knowledge gathered from past events, whether by conscious observation or by consideration and reflection.” Think work experience, for example. Or lessons you’ve learned that have made you into who you are.
2. “a particular kind of consciousness, which can in some contexts be distinguished from ‘reason’ or ‘knowledge’.” Think aesthetic or religious experience. This kind of experience is usually considered personal, yet it feels so authentically true that we often need to share it.

The first sense of the word refers to something we’ve learned in the past, whereas the second sense relates to something we feel in the present during which the whole being and consciousness is activated.

•  Are these two ways of thinking about experience mutually exclusive?
• Can we learn to experience authentically?
• Can we have authentic experience on a habitual basis?
• Do we feel more free and real when we do something habitually or when we do something new and exciting?
• Can a consumption of a product give us a sense of freedom?
• What’s the role of shame in all this?

These are some questions I’m going to look at.

1. Abrahams, Roger D. (1986) “Ordinary and extraordinary experience.” In The antropology of experience. By Victor W. Turner and Edward M. Bruner. Urbana & Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 45-72.

2. Williams, Raymond. (1983) Keywords. A vocabulary of culture and society. Revised edition. New York: Oxford University Press.