For reasons that I will not go into, I sought out and visited the Fair Trade cafe in Glebe last week. I specifically went there to have a cup of coffee. Fair Trade coffee, as you can imagine by the name above the door.
Getting there was no big chore - it is just around the corner from a shopping centre that I go to in order to buy my favourite salad dressing, so all I had to do was walk out of the parking thingy and up the hill a bit and there I was - in folk and charm music heaven.
Glebe is awash with cafes. It's like a hippy with lice - they are everywhere. I have walked up and down Glebe Point Rd many times, and tried a lot of cafes, and as usual, where there is a cluster of cafes, I use the Force to choose which one to dine at.
The first thing I look at is the decor and fitout. If it has cheap, formica tables and looks dirty, I'll avoid it (which is why I avoid eating in most country sandwich shops).
The next thing I look at is how crowded it is. Large groups of people can't be wrong. And before you say, "But look at McDonalds - lots of people go there", I will respond, "I like McDonalds".
I don't eat there every day. I don't eat there every week. Sometimes months will go by and not a single quarter pounder will pass my lips. But that doesn't stop me from respecting the company and liking their food. I don't crave it, like I crave good Thai or Indian food (unless I have a hangover - then I would kill for McDonalds), but I like their food. It is not crap. It's not great, but it's good enough.
Anyway, I look at the volume of patrons (and by that, I do not mean how large each patron is). It was a weekday, around 10am, so most of the cafes only had say 6-10 people in them.
Fair Trade had 1.
That is never a good sign. But I persisted.
They have these great windows that open out onto the street, and the window ledge is wide enough for one to spread the paper and eat breakfast at. That includes a paper as big as the SMH. I didn't feel like a feed, so I just had a coffee.
That might be a good thing.
Whilst waiting for the coffee, I had a poke around the cafe. The counter was covered in the usual hippy pamphlets - "come and see Lailieaphaedron perform a harpsichord phenomena dedicated to celebrating the coming birth of the earth-mother" and that sort of dribble.
The menu actually had meat on it, in the form of bacon and a hamburger, but that was it.
The menu also described the origins of the coffee that they serve. It's fair trade, and it's a blend of beans from PNG, East Timor (or Timor Leste as some prefer) and Peru.
Peru? Who ships goods halfway around the world for rich westerners to consume as pleasureable items? What a waste? Think of the CO2 emitted to ship goods from Peru! And bulky goods at that! Add up the food miles and you'll see how many polar bears were microwaved as a result!
Oh, it's fair trade coffee is it? Well, that's all right then.
I wonder what happens when the fair trade people end up in the same room as the food miles people. I guess it's similar to when the spartacists turn up at a meeting with the trotskyites.
And the coffee?
Terrible. Burnt. Bitter. Nasty. Really, really nasty.
I decamped back to the shopping mall and spent five minutes walking around trying to find something that would get rid of the terrible taste in my mouth.
Gloria Jeans? Nope, don't want another coffee.
Sushi? Don't think it will work.
Vanilla slice? Don't think that will work either.
Sausage roll? I'll give it a go, but I don't have 20 cents for the sauce. Ugh, a dry sausage roll.
It worked though. Somehow the dry, flakey pastry managed to strip most of the raw, burnt coffee husk taste off my tongue.
That said, I will apply my golden rule of cafe rating and go back for a second attempt. The hippy on duty might simply have been unable to work the coffee machine, or she might have been too blissed out on whale music to be pulling the right levers. I will also give the food a go next time around.
Apart from that, it seemed like a pleasant place to hang out. Except that I hate the thought of it being busy - packed with stinking hippies from the floor to the rafters.
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