The Gingerbread Latte: The Joey Fatone of Starbucks holiday beverages

Today I went to Starbucks and ordered the Gingerbread Latte.  I got it with one pump of syrup as opposed to the usual three and it was delicious.  But as I was sipping it, I had an epiphany: Starbucks holiday lattes are a bit like a 1980s boy-band: The Chestnut Praline Latte is the leader, the Caramel Brûlée Latte is the sensual ladies’ man, The Eggnog Latte is the Donnie Wahlberg-type tough guy who raps, and then the Gingerbread Latte is the funny guy who jokes around (e.g., Joey Fatone from N’Sync).

Perhaps this theory strikes you as a bit of a stretch, but please allow me make my case. Throughout the entirety of human history there have been four basic male archetypes: the leader, the warrior, the joker, and the ladies’ man. In medieval times you had the king, the knight, the wizard/court jester, and then that one dude who had sex with a bunch of women while everyone else was at work. These archetypes persist even to this day and were distilled to their very essence in the form of the 1980s boy-band.  But why did boy-bands—which even today drive legions of teenaged girls wild with their sultry rhythms—so capture the imagination of society?  

The reason, gentle reader, is that they took all the attractive male qualities and put them together into a single group and then, for some reason no one really understands, had them sing songs in unison about how they wanted to—quote---"sex you up". Likewise, Starbucks has taken all of the archetypal holiday flavors and built lattes around them with the intent of appealing to as large a market as possible.  In doing so, Starbucks has really given us, the consumer, the best of both worlds: you get all the raw sexuality and seductive energy of a 98 Degrees, but with none of the crappy music.  

With that said, the Gingerbread Latte—while delicious—is unfortunately the funny guy/class clown archetype in this boy-band of holiday beverages. Yes, it perhaps lacks the sensuality of, say, a Caramel Brûlée Latte, and it will never be in the spotlight like the Chestnut Praline Latte, and maybe it doesn’t have the robust warrior-like qualities of the Eggnog Latte, but it has its own special talents to offer the Starbucks consumer.  It’s by no means a perfect beverage, but it has carved out its own niche and the whipped cream and nutmeg sprinkled on top are delicious. You've earned your place in this boy-band of holiday beverages, Gingerbread Latte. 

Verdict: A solid drink, but it will never be the star.

Score: 4 Stars and 4.5 Bucks out of 10.

Chestnut Praline Latte: What am I doing with my life?

Lots of people (and by lots of people, I mean pretty much no one) ask me how long I plan to do this blog. I know from experience not to have overly ambitious goals in this regard.

I first learned my lesson back in high school, when I tried out for the football team in tenth grade.  After try-outs the coach approached me and said, "Sorry, Kid, but you just don't have it."  When I asked the coach for clarification about what he meant exactly by 'it', he explained that it was a combination of things, including basic hand-eye coordination, reasonable genetics, not possessing a crippling fear of bees, the ability to not giggle upon hearing the word 'buttocks', and just general athletic ability.

I was crushed, but if one positive thing came out of that moment, I learned that sometimes one has to put in some real work to achieve one's goals. I then decided I would train every day over summer holidays and make it onto the team next year. People laughed at me, and told me it would never happen---and in retrospect I should really commend those people for their accurate take on the situation, because I'm actually legitimately terrible at football. But how could I have known that at the time?  

So, yeah, I've learned some lessons the hard way and have come to realize that we inhabit a cruel and unforgiving universe---ruled by chaos and despair---which will only crush your dreams and ultimately discard you like the napkin used to wipe the sweat off a lumberjack's brow.  

So I don't have serious goals for this blog, but I did set one goal when I started: to write twenty posts.  After that, I can reevaluate things or take a break or maybe just blog once a week.  I'm flexible. Besides, my student told me that vlogging is the new blogging, so perhaps I'm behind the times and should invest in a camera.

With all that in mind, we take one step closer to my goal with a review of the Chestnut Praline Latte. The CPL is perhaps Starbucks' signature holiday drink, and it might one day achieve equal footing with the now mythical Pumpkin Spice Latte. The drink is a straightforward latte with some chestnut syrup, but what really makes it delicious is the added whipped cream and the crunchy topping that is subsequently sprinkled onto the drink.  I asked the manager what this crunchy stuff was, and he read off a list of things---I think one of them was cloves or something.  (That's the sort of hard-hitting research I'm willing to do for this blog, gentle reader.)  In any case, it's delicious. The chestnut flavor of the latte strikes me as more of a novelty---kind of a throwback to that old-timey song where that guy is talking about chestnuts roasting by an open fire and Jack Frost nipping at your nose. In practice, you hardly ever see some guy roasting chestnuts by an open fire, and I assume that's because chestnuts are kind of gross, which is unfortunately the case with the latte part of the drink.  

But for the first few sips, the whipped cream and crunchy topping flavors dominate the chestnut flavor and the initial experience is fantastic. I'd say that just having a latte with the crunchy stuff sprinkled on top would be awesome. But overall I'm nonplussed by this drink---it has some positive features, but the chestnut flavor is a miss for me.  Still, it is very popular and it is certainly worth a try.

Verdict: Interesting drink; delicious topping.

Score: 5 Stars and 4 bucks out of 10.

Peppermint Mocha: a cup of magic (not really)

Yesterday afternoon I went into Starbucks and ordered the Peppermint Mocha, which has as a tagline, “Sip a cup of magic”.  After discussing the logistics of making such a drink with the barista, we settled upon making the drink with just one pump of mocha sauce and peppermint syrup, as opposed to the usual three pumps of each. The two syrups are combined and added to espresso and steamed milk, and the beverage is then topped with whipped cream and dark chocolate curls, giving it the appearance of an after-dinner dessert coffee.

I made the case that calling it a cup of magic was an overstatement on Starbucks’ part.  The barista---who possibly writes drink descriptions for Starbucks in her spare time---said something like, “Does sipping it make you remember sitting by the Christmas tree and waiting for Santa Claus to come down the chimney?  If so, I’d argue that it really is a cup of magic.”

I closed my eyes, took a sip. The chocolate and peppermint flavours invaded my senses and I could remember opening presents on Christmas morning, eating candy canes by the fire, and singing Christmas carols.  Yeah, life was simpler in those days. Back then, “I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus” was just a heartwarming ballad in which a small boy discusses in a forthright manner witnessing his mother cheating on her husband by kissing---and presumably later having sex with---Santa Claus.

But then I grew up and my innocence faded. I realized the Santa in the song was just the boy’s dad dressed in a Santa suit. Later still, I understood that the song probably doesn’t even take place during the holiday season and the kid’s dad just has some bizarre Santa fetish that his wife indulges every other Tuesday after they come home from their biweekly date night at Applebee’s.

But, yeah, I get it: the Peppermint Mocha is a drink that evokes this childhood nostalgia that transports the consumer to a happier and more innocent time. It truly is a cup of magic. Or at least it would be if it weren’t totally gross.

OK, I’m kidding. The drink isn’t really gross—the flavours work well together, in fact. But I nevertheless found it hard to finish after lunch.  This would be great at home after dinner with some Baileys or Kahlua added, but it has too much of a dessert vibe to be a sensible go-to drink on your way to work at 8:30 in the morning.  Still, it’s delicious and makes for a perfect treat during the holidays when you have nowhere else to be.

Verdict: Pretty good, but not quite magical.

Score: 5 Stars and 5 Bucks out of 10.

Nitro Cold Brew: Can I work at Starbucks, please?

I had to drive a few hundred kilometres, so I figured I might as well drive a little bit extra out of the way to go to a Starbucks location with the nitro cold brew on tap and it was totally worth it. They take their cold brew and infuse it with nitrogen and it is then dispensed from a shiny metal tap.

As it’s poured, it shares a look that is similar to Guinness, and the texture is not altogether different either. This would undoubtedly be delicious with an added scoop of vanilla ice cream—a sort of cold brew twist on the Affogato—but it tastes great by itself and Starbucks offers numerous alternative ways it can be served, including with cascara cold foam, topped with a chocolate spray, or with a vanilla sweet cream.

I had never seen a person under the age of 40 working at a Starbucks before today, but the woman working the cash register was probably in her sixties and it gave me hope that I could perhaps realize my dream of one day working at S-bucks. My life so far has been an unending parade of unfulfilled dreams, beginning in my twenties when I thought I could be a male model.  People back then would always say, “No offence, but don’t you have to be kind of handsome to be a male model?”  Then I’d get mad and be like, “NOT IF YOU MODEL SOCKS!”

But it turns out I couldn’t hack it in the cutthroat world of male sock modelling—although, sometimes when I put my socks on in the morning, I pretend that I am one of those famous international sock models and my lips curl into a wry smile.

But working at S-Bucks is a dream I might actually be able to realistically attain. Would I be a bit older than most of my coworkers?  Yeah, sure.  But I think I’d do a great job and over time my coworkers would realize that I can do the job every bit as well as they can.

I imagine customer interactions with me going a bit like this:

Me: Hey Jimmy! You having the usual?

Customer: I’ve never seen you before in my life; moreover, I’m a woman.

Me: My bad. I have trouble remembering names, recognizing age and gender, and pretty much struggle with anything that is at all relevant when working in customer service.  But I guess that's what everyone says happens after you do back-to-back tours of duty in Afghanistan, right?

Customer: Literally no one has ever said that.

Me: Fair enough.

Probably they’d keep me away from the customers after that and I could then spend my workdays pouring myself cold and tall glasses of nitro cold brew straight from the tap. After twenty years maybe I’d even retire with a pension.  But regardless of whether this dream will ever come true or not, the NCB will remain my favourite drink at Starbucks---it’s great either by itself or with the sweet cream.  Go for it!

Verdict: If you like Guinness, get the Nitro Cold Brew.

Score: 10 Stars and 10 Bucks out of ten. (WHAT???)

The Pumpkin Chai Tea Latte, the Eggnog-Chai Latte, and the Dirty Cheg: Part III.

OK, I'll keep this third part short as we now move onto the Dirty Chegg.  The barista B mentioned in Part I pointed out that the name has the unfortunately property of sounding like a slur, but thankfully ‘Chegg’ in this case is just a portmanteau of Chai and Eggnog and the dirtiness comes from adding a shot of espresso to this tea latte. The name alone makes this one great, and I felt a bit like a “bad boy” while drinking this one.

Just the act of ordering a ‘dirty’ drink hints at an unscrupulous nature dancing just beneath one’s skin---waiting to escape---and the Dirty Chegg is more than just a drink: it is a straightforward appeal to emotion and one’s basest instincts, a celebration of irrationality and chaos, and an exaltation of the id above the superego. Plus it's delicious. The extra espresso shot gives this drink a grittier feel than the ordinary Eggnog-Chai Tea Latte and chugging this one feels like drinking a Christina Aguilera video on the fourth of July.  And I don’t mean that ‘Beautiful’ song, either—that song is much more inspirational than the Dirty Chegg and it has an empowering message that speaks to disaffected youth even today. No, I meant one of her other videos.

Full disclosure: I have no idea what it means to drink a Christina Aguilera video on the fourth of July, and I think the ability to write meaningless drink descriptions has now rubbed off on me after reading countless beverage commentaries from the Starbucks website.

But, yeah, I would have this one again, although I would want to explore other ‘dirty’ drinks first.

Verdict: I love the Dirty Chegg.

Score: 7 Stars and 2 Bucks out of 10

The Pumpkin Chai Tea Latte, the Eggnog-Chai tea Latte, and the Dirty Chegg: Part II.

OK, it’s time for Part II of this series.  If you missed Part I, check it out below!  We now move on to the Eggnog-Chai Latte, which I got with full sweetness. I used to love eggnog when I was a kid, but after I turned 30, buying eggnog just became a thinly veiled excuse to bust out the Bacardi and get drunk off my ass. I probably haven’t had eggnog mixed with anything other than rum for several years, but today I had it with a Chai tea latte, and it was again delicious. Very sweet, but somehow eggnog is sufficiently rich that it can handle the extra sugar. The Chai and eggnog indeed pair well together. Are they as good as the Chai-and-pumpkin mix?  Perhaps not, but the Eggnog-Chai latte definitely makes for a great once-a-year beverage during the holidays.

But wait! I’m supposed to dole out more dating advice to that guy from the café. OK, here it goes, and this one is big.

Millennials are great, but one thing some of them lack is patience and it’s easy to see why: today people can binge-watch their favourite show in a single day, look up just about anything with a few mouse-clicks, and talk to their friends anywhere they want with their cell phones.

Back when I was growing up, you couldn’t do any of that stuff. We had to tune in every Monday night at 8 pm just to watch MacGyver and at the end of each season there’d always be some episode where MacGyver was going to crash into a truck or something and we’d be watching, going, “I sure hope MacGyver doesn’t die.”  Then the screen would freeze and the narrator would say, “Will MacGyver survive? Tune in September of 1987 to find out!”

We’d spend the next six months anxiously waiting just to learn whether MacGyver died. (Spoiler alert: he didn’t.)

Was it frustrating? You bet. But it built character and I believe it imbued my generation with a patience that would ultimately come in handy when we entered adulthood. Also back when I was young, online dating didn’t even exist and so again more patience was required. If you wanted to meet a woman at a bar, you had to do some stupid stuff like “accidentally” bump into her on the way to the washroom and then she’d be like, “WHAT THE FUCK IS WRONG WITH YOU? YOU JUST SPILLED MY DRINK ALL OVER ME!”

Then you’d have to apologize and offer to pay for her dry cleaning, and nine times out of ten you’d just end up becoming a liaison between her and her dry cleaner for the next six to eight months.  But that one time out of ten, she’d start having romantic feelings for you.  She’d be looking in the mirror and she’d say to herself: “That guy who brings me my dry cleaning every Tuesday morning evokes strange atavistic longings deep within my innermost being!” (I assume women say stuff like that to themselves in the mirror, but if not, my bad!) At that point you’d be in a relationship (I assume).

It was a different time, for sure, but the point is: you needed to be patient back then, and you really needed to understand the inner-workings of the whole dry cleaning process. Probably none of this stuff would work today, but the general principle of being patient without getting discouraged still applies, and it applies to many things beyond just online dating. Good luck, gentle reader!

Oh wait, I have to give my verdict and score for the Eggnog-Chai Tea Latte, right?

Verdict: Pretty good, but definitely not an "every day” drink. Maybe something you can have once or twice during the holidays.

Score: 5 Stars and 3 Bucks out of 10.

The Pumpkin Chai Tea Latte, the Eggnog-Chai Latte, and the Dirty Chegg: Part I

This is a three-part post, so you’ll have to tune in later to see the second and third parts.  I also have to give a shout-out to the barista B (I won’t use his full name, partly in order to preserve his anonymity, and partly because I do not know the remaining letters of his name), who gave me multiple samples yesterday.  He is obviously a patron of the arts.

But this post isn’t entirely about coffee: I also have some wisdom to dole out, gentle reader. You see, a few days ago I had to go into town to meet someone and I ended up going to a different coffee shop. This café had two-person tables tightly bunched together and I was sitting beside a young man and woman. The guy was complaining to his friend that he hadn’t been able to get any dates online and his friend told him: “Just keep being yourself.”

Not to be a contrarian, but I think if this guy is really not getting any dates then probably it would be better advice to say:  “You need to be a completely different person, Bro.”

But I wasn’t about to insert myself into their conversation. I nevertheless would like to give that guy some advice. You see, I briefly tried online dating about eleven years ago before I was married, and---not to brag---I was pretty successful. I should point out that by “successful” I mean I spent most of my evenings sobbing into an embroidered throw-pillow while watching The Secret Life of Bees---but I like to think that is still some measure of success. So I’ve got a few tips for this guy that could help---I hope you’re out there reading, young Sir!

While these tips are really intended for that guy, they apply to any heterosexual man who is trying to survive in the world of online dating.

The first tip—and this one is solid gold—is that before even making your profile, you should make a simple woman’s profile without pictures.  Then sift through the responses you get and see if there are any that stand out as being particularly effective. This will give you an idea of what works and what doesn’t. But you can’t stop there: this is only going to get your foot in the door and you need to know what to do next. So you should pick the top potential suitors and go out on a couple of dates with these guys—you know, kick the tires a bit, really find out what makes these guys tick. If you want to take things to the next level, allow yourself to be ensnared by their spider’s web of seduction. At that point, maybe you’ll even be in a relationship, but if not, you'll at least have a better sense of what works and what doesn't.

I’ll have more insights on this later, but I should get to the first beverage I tried: The Pumpkin Chai Tea Latte.  This was recommended to me and it did not disappoint, although I am very glad I got it half-sweet. The pumpkin and chai complement each other well and the pumpkin spice on top gives it an extra bite that is a perfect taste of fall. Even half-sweet it is still a bit sweeter than I like, but not overwhelmingly so, and I had no problems finishing this one. Would I get it again? Not sure, but I acknowledge that it’s delicious. If you’re looking for a new fall beverage, give this one a try!

Verdict: A great combination of flavours. Delicious!

Score: Six Stars and four Bucks out of 10.