Coffee Cat

Sometimes these chance encounters are so charming, this was no exception.

I went to Budapest on a mini-getaway. Me and my man visited a spa and many great restaurants (Drum Café Budapest and Mazel Tov being the favourites). But most of all it was a trip to discover the very best coffee this split-down-the-middle city has to offer. You better believe I had done my research. Coffee Cat however, was not on my list.

It was this cute little place I happened upon. I had a few hours to kill, so I wanted to sit and write. Sometimes these chance encounters are so charming, this was no exception.

There were 4 small tables and a window bar, so this was a tiny place. The counter, loaded with cakes, together with the coffee machine took up a 4th of the shop. The walls were decorated with black & white photographs of Budapest and in the window sat a stuffed toy cat. There were another stuffed cat and other toys in a box under the table too, so it was easy to picture kids playing there, while parents sip espressos and finish the pages of the newspaper that they didn't have time for during the morning rush.

The barista greeted me with a big smile and invited me in. He suggested a poppy-seed pastry, so i happily obliged together with a cappuccino. The cappuccino was nice, although I wouldn't call it memorable. But what coffee could really be memorable in the shadows of your first meeting with a poppy-seed pastry?

I am trying to place the taste... It's like taking a sip of water from a cold river in a pine forest. Like the smell of wet moss drying in sunlight filtering down through the branches. It sounds stupid. How can a pastry taste like that? But how can you place a flavour, or explain a sensation, you have never had before? We have to turn to our memories and ask "What does this remind me off?". And then the magic happens, because your brain will fetch out the closest sensation it has. It is an artform to associate like that, it takes a lot of training. You tougch on it every day as a barista, but you could study it on its own. Think about how a bag of coffee have written on it "Tastes like strawberry jam" or ‘cherries’ or ‘burnt wood'. And then you actually taste it, even though you would say it tastes like ‘coffee’ or ‘something I can’t quite place’. This is because someone has trained to ask their brain the question of “what else than ‘coffee’ are these flavours?”. Our memories lead us to the associations and it’s a beautiful thing.

I was actually the first person posting a picture of them on Google Maps, besides themselves, and from what i can tell they have grown and become a lot better since I visited. In any case — this was a quiet and sweet little place. Perfect for writing. I would be back for more pastry and coffee. I really liked it here.