Seems like the same tired take on third wave coffee, without much specific to Iran. Some people like the flavor of coffee grown in different regions, just like tea or wine. If you want a classic espresso roast blend of whatever, I haven't been to a cafe that won't sell you that.
And the usual retort you get if you point that out is "but this new fancy coffee tastes worse", which always strikes me as amusing coming from folks who minutes before were claiming it all tasted the same and mocking the idea of tasting notes being real.
Having a preference for a traditional status quo blend is still a preference!
One thing the author fails to take note of here is that Iranians have historically been extremely precious about their bougie little drinks. From tea and coffee houses to summer cordials like sekanjabin, basil seed drinks, and sour cherry sharbat to the dozens of varieties of doogh to all the little fresh juice places in Tehran, getting way too into beverages is an enduring Iranian cultural tradition (albeit fancy coffee comes with an unusually high price tag).
Wow, so harsh! But also so true, not in Iran but in my city an Iranian café opened across the street from the fine arts museum and serves all sorts of drinks like hibiscus sharbat, khakshir. Very trendy, very bougie.
>They’re selling a lifestyle.
People eat up "lifestyle" brand stuff like crazy. I suspect people just want something special in their daily lives. I get that.
I assume it's appealing to sellers too because it inspires some potential level of loyalty and uniqueness when it comes to their products where otherwise it is "just coffee".
Granted I say that while I sip my Kirkland coffee here at my desk, amused that what was once a sort of semi generic store brand, Kirkland now has it's own apparel with its brand on it and Costco fans love it.
I guess we can find something special everywhere.
I was on a coffee shop kick for...15 years?
And then I just quit. I'm not sure if was the price, waiting in line, or the quality going down since so many places popped up or what. But I just have zero interest in buying a coffee. I drink generic stuff I make at home. Or I just go without.
Oddly around the same time I quit drinking sodas.
I am kind of the same. I will support local coffee shops frequently but I am not good enough to notice the super fine flavor profiles or remember them. They all taste “yummy” including the stuff I grind and brew at home or from Costco.
Wow. This is like complaining about going into my local pub for a beer and discovering they have a dozen taps. Well sure, different people like different things, and sometimes I might want a creamy stout, and sometimes a West Coast IPA, and sometimes a light lager on a hot summer day.
I guess life was better for those behind the iron curtain that only had one brand?
I think it’s actually a good thing that people are increasingly curious and informed about where the things they consume come from. Sure, some of it can be a front, but consumers get a choice to be more discriminating and demanding about where their consumption comes from, and that can (and has!) lead to better production practices; feels weird to complain about that.
This is also a huge part. A lot of the "look at this insane price for coffee" is because exploitative practices for centuries has led to people having price expectations for coffee that are unreasonable in a fair market. There's definitely crazy high end coffees that are $20 a cup for various reasons, but $6 pounds of coffee from the grocery store are also an anomaly.
Unfortunately most people would not want to pay market rates for coffee that is farmed by people paid living wages. Kona coffee is a good example of this. It runs about USD $25-$30/lb in bean form for actual Kona coffee (not blends)
The author just finds the process of ordering complicated because they do not know how to. I think there is opportunity here to make selecting the drink of your choice a better experience. There might also be space here for coffee discovery or exploration for the customer.
Yes, but why should everybody have to show the same level of care for everything they do/consume as aficionados?
Just like it can be extremely fulfilling to build a PC from parts, compile your own Linux kernel, get an old car working again etc., it can be nice to have somebody else do all of that for you and focus on the details of life that you enjoy most.
They don't? I was in Iran recently for a business trip and I simply asked for my usual cappuccino one sugar at almost every cafe I went to and it was hassle-free experience.
It's actually good to offer more options to invoke curiosity, but the old options are still there.
If there’s an increasing number of options, isn’t it by definition becoming more complicated?
I mean, it's seldom that complicated even. They just went from having one choice of espresso to, likely, at most 3. The most fancy coffee shops I've ever been to usually don't have more than a couple espresso options dialed in at any given time. If you don't care, just pick the cheapest or ask for the person's favorite.
I'm sure there is some influencer/performative aspect to this as well that the author is reacting to, but the complaint strikes me mostly as a "I was ok with the status quo, and I dislike that other people prefer things other than that". Having preferences and choices is not by default some sort of pretentious thing!
Not Iranian, but if I want plain tasty black coffee, I can grind, brew, and drink it topless at home. My favorite cafes in the bay area all have something more to offer me than decent plain coffee. I think this is just indicative of how the culture surrounding third places has changed.
One big advantage of cafes is that they sell coffee and exist pretty much everywhere. The same can't be said for my home.
> People are bored, insecure, or just looking for something to latch onto. So we pay more for a label that makes us feel seen. It’s not about taste—it’s about signaling. And cafés know that. They exploit it. Ruthlessly.
This is a poor take on what's actually a rich cultural shift towards variety seeking. What's wrong with that? The author could go to a regular cafe and have the regular coffee they want, but some people want trying new things.
It can be frustrating for people that simply don't care for the variety and now have to make choices in a place where they used to be fine with an order of "one coffee, please".
Personally (quantity over quality when it comes to coffee), as long as I can still do that and get a hot, caffeinated, sugar-free (in regions where that's the default) beverage, I don't mind.
> ... now have to make choices in a place where they used to be fine ...
That seems to be the customer's problem though, not the business owner. The cafe owner has no obligation to stick to the old way of doing things forever. Companies change all the time and if customers aren't happy about it they should move on to other options.
Sure, just like I (or actually TFA's author; I really don't care that much) can scoff at these businesses, and be annoyed if more and more places become like that.
one alcohol, please
> a refreshment, please
> food or drink?
> why do I need to specify. I've been out all day in the heat. Bring me a few refreshments.
One shot of Everclear coming right up!
There's a strong force in humans, an instinct against anything new or unfamiliar. It manifests as conservatism, and it comes out even against insignificant shifts.
Article posits this argument:
"They’re not really about coffee anymore. They’re selling a lifestyle."
Then says of the old coffee "Coffee in Iran isn’t new—we were drinking it long before tea took over. Back in the Safavid era, coffeehouses were where people gathered for stories, debates, and a hit of something strong." - this is a lifestyle related to coffee.
And says about the new coffee "Walk in, and the menu reads like a novel: “Ethiopian Yirgacheffe with hints of jasmine and citrus.”" - this is the literal attributes of coffee, origin and flavour profile.
I'm sorry, but coffee is now, more than ever, about the coffee. People who enjoy coffee then make it a part of their lifestyle.
I'd love to hear more about the older Iranian coffee culture, that sounds wonderfully romantic. It's a pattern across the world that we've lost access to third spaces as everything gains a capitalised cost. And as media has intensified and technology poked into every waking moment we're less likely to gather amongst our community in those spaces to just sit and listen anymore. I think we've evolved new ways of doing things, like how we enjoy our newfound international access to coffee varietals but it's good to address what we've lost in doing so.
This article is a bit whiny about the new, and doesn't talk enough about the qualities of the old. There's a good point to be made, but the article makes it poorly.
Seriously. This article seems to reveal much more about the author than about coffee.
I can't speak about Iran, but getting into coffee is no different from getting into pie-making, or sourdough, or wine, or cocktail-making.
They write:
> Coffee used to be fuel. Now it’s a lifestyle accessory.
I think this is the quote that reveals everything. People don't want just "fuel" anymore. They want something that actually tastes good.
But for some reason the author thinks it's all about marketing, insecurity, and influencers. Can't the author just let people enjoy what they like?
Why does it bother the author so much? Why can't they even imagine it might just be because the coffee tastes better, and it's a relatively inexpensive and fun hobby if you want to get into it? Why do they have to judge people for it instead?
> "They’re not really about coffee anymore. They’re selling a lifestyle."
I like the emphatic style of GPT-4o lately. I can spot it from a mile.
I'm glad Yrgacheffe is available somewhere. It seems to have dried up in the USA. I wouldn't have gotten hooked on coffee without it.
Brings to mind the classic(?) Denis Leary skit: https://youtube.com/watch?v=D66P47NNnfE
I think there may be more to overcomplicated brews than lifestyle or status. It's a desire to get technical in a world where so much of life has been automated away from the consumer's view or ability to affect it. Coffee is a way to tinker with something in the same way previous generations tinkered with their cars or radios or whatever. It's an outlet for creativity and technical skill building for those that engage in brewing.
Coffee shops will sell rituals, status, prestige, sophistication or the appearance thereof. Same as every other business. But that's not to say the product can't be superior - it can. It also doesn't say that every product that makes use of those marketing techniques is superior; but even if it isn't, if the customer walks away happy, they must've done something right, right?
Don't we do the same with the technology we're working on? How often is it truly better beyond any critique? People were getting stuff done even before our products were around with less fuss and a different set of problems. We do what we do to end up busy with stuff so we can do what we do all over again, don't we? I digress.
It does get tiresome when everyone is trying to sell you an experience and it becomes disappointing when the selling of experiences becomes so commoditized, the thing being sold loses its credibility as something special on account of being sold as such. Is it a crisis of authenticity?
To each, their own. I used to tinker with espresso based drinks, but I'm mostly over it. I've learned to discern (some) better coffee beans from others, but I mostly don't drink that - I can't justify paying that much for a coffee I brew myself and that I may botch out of being in a hurry. It's also a distraction that takes time I don't have anymore. But it was fun to explore for a while and I now own a very fancy looking espresso machine, grinder and all sorts of acccessories.
Writing blog posts against people who are precious about their coffee is also a lifestyle signal.
1) Why is this even on HN? Some guy complains about third wave coffee on his trashy, possibly AI generated, blog. Very interesting.
2) Since people take this seriously for some reason: Fine coffee is neither a hallucination, nor a theater performance, nor a sign of ultimate decadence. Or at least no more so than fine tea and wine. Different producers, roasts and preparation methods give markedly different coffee with a lot of nuance that you can learn to discern and enjoy. Or not -- to each his own.
>Please don't complain that a submission is inappropriate. If a story is spam or off-topic, flag it.
This submission is not technically inappropriate and flagging it would be an abuse of that feature. It's just very low quality and very surprising that it made #1 on HN.
Funny how even a repressive theocracy can seem so familiar. I guess that's globalization for you.
Anyone care to recommend some specialty coffee-shops in Tehran? Or in Iran, more generally? That's the one thing I'm searching for when going to a new (big-ish) city, I've honestly stopped caring about museums, archaeological places or the like, I just want to go to the same specialty coffee shops to which I go here in Bucharest, to be surrounded by the same people I'm surrounded here in Bucharest while reading a book or a magazine.
And to give something in return, for Athens I can heartily recommend Taf Coffee [1], and also MOTIV [2] just across the small street, and in Vienna I have a soft spot for CoffeePirates [3]
[1] https://www.google.com/maps/place/Taf+Coffee/@37.9834313,23....
[2] https://www.google.com/maps/place/MOTIV/@37.9835867,23.73117...
[3] https://www.google.com/maps/place/CoffeePirates/@48.2173765,...
Why do you prefer to spend time in the same setting with the same people when you are in a new place? Why not stay home?
OP does not literally mean the same people but the same type of people.
Having a familiar group with something in common is a great conversation starter and way to make new friends. This is similar to how you can visit a new area and stop by a brewery (if you like beer), a sports game (if you like sports), etc.
> OP does not literally mean the same people but the same type of people.
Same question really - aren't you most likely to find the same type of people at home?
Sure, but sometimes you also want to travel. I find myself doing this a lot when I'm on a trip - you want to dive into a new culture or location, do things you wouldn't do, but you also need time to recharge and feel something a bit more normal.
Coffee shop or brewery or dive bar culture can vary some place to place, but there's usually core elements of the sort of social contract that are core to it and can provide a sense of routine or homely comfort even when you're staying at a hotel in another country. Having an experience that's 80% the same as the one you'd have back home can make it easier for you to recognize and appreciate that 20% difference sometimes and learn about a new culture.
No.
Liking coffee is only one aspect of a person. Once you're talking you can learn more, make connections, and potentially have a friend who you keep talking to even after you return home.
To give a more HN-specific example: If you work at a software company in the US and go to a software company in India/Poland/etc. aren't you going to find the same people at home? Of course not, their job is only one small part of who they are.
> If you work at a software company in the US and go to a software company in India/Poland/etc. aren't you going to find the same people at home? Of course not, their job is only one small part of who they are.
Yes, and (back to the original point) despite cultural differences, you will have something in common to connect with one another! (complaining about software)
I find the world pretty chaotic as it is right now, and pretty split up, seeing and directly experimenting an international informal community that ignores borders somehow makes me more relaxed, gives purpose to a place/city I'm in at a certain moment in time.
Later edit: I'm over-reaching/exaggerating to make a point, but what I'm doing it's similar in spirit to how back in the European Middle Ages many foreign merchants were seeking accommodation at places very similar to what they had back home, think of the Hanseatic League and of all the Hanseatic Houses spread throughout the merchant cities from the Baltic or the North Sea. This one was for London: The German Hanse in London and the Steelyard [1]
[1] https://www.thehistoryoflondon.co.uk/the-german-hanse-in-lon...
It's not really hard to have a default coffee type + size and serve that when the client asks for a coffee with no specifications. I wonder why no fancy coffee place does that. I guess it has to do with that hostile strain of sales tactics where they screw with your instincts and blind spots to sell you things you don't really want. I'm growing more and more intolerant with that kind of tactics, because they're everywhere and you need to actively fight with them to avoid your money being essentially scammed out of your wallet. I wonder if there's something one can do to screw with them back.
Most fancy coffee shops do do that though. If you walk in and ask for a drip coffee or an espresso, especially if you just say "I want a basic espresso", you'll probably get what you want. I'm sure there's some places that would be annoying about it, but most specialty places deal with plenty of people coming in every day not used to ordering in specialty places.
If you really want a basic coffee with the cheapest beans you can find, why would you go to a fancy shop? If anything, it's more likely to work there than going to a multi-course restaurant and trying to order a hamburger. There are other businesses that serve a "no choices" need.
Unfortunately that's not my experience. The places I've been just point you to the menu, which normally is quite complex and with many choices.
> If you really want a basic coffee with the cheapest beans you can find
Doesn't have to be cheap, it has to be plain. Just the coffee that, in average, the average disinterested client would like. We had a similar concept - now almost disappeared - with wine. The wine of the house was an average non-fancy wine that you could drink with your dinner without spending time deciphering the wine list.
> If you really want a basic coffee with the cheapest beans you can find, why would you go to a fancy shop?
Because cities are migrating en masse to fancy shops. Selling lifestyle is apparently more profitable & glamorous, so everyone wants to be the fancy shop rather than the humble bar.
Reminds of a conversation I overheard between two middle aged guys talking about different expensive watches...
Veblan wrote about "conspicuous consumption" over 100 years ago. I see this as the same disease
[flagged]
Not going to say it's definitely not ChatGPT-assisted, but you can see the author's editing process here: https://github.com/adelbordbari/adelbordbari.github.io/commi...
I don't think the em dash is nearly as good of a tell as you think it is – largely because I use it all the time. Likewise for the single quote, they use it throughout so I'd wager it's either a stylistic choice or their blogging platform does that automatically.
That's exactly what a rogue LLM model would say! /s
I would hesitate to judge based on what's "easy to type" on the keyboard in front of me.
A lot of editing tools and processes automatically converting `--` to `—`, so folks editing markdown or using a Word processor might get the emdash automatically. Similar things are often done for matching double quotes. I wouldn't be surprised if quite a few WYSIWYG CMS systems do this conversion too.
There are also a lot of input methods that make it trivial to write special characters.
Apple famously uses the Alt/Option key to make inputting a lot of special characters simple. Look at any place that does a lot of writing and publishing, and you're bound to see a lot of Macs.
On Windows, you can memorize and input code points pretty easily as well if you have a number pad. Just hold Alt and punch in the 4-digit character code.
I hop platforms a lot, so I commonly use digraphs with Ctrl+K in VIM, or TeX input in Emacs to insert unicode characters. I'll also use `Ctrl+x 8 <RET>` to insert characters by name in Emacs when I need to search for something specific.
Or... perhaps they typed it in one of the many editors (Word, Google Docs, Notion, etc) which also substitute "—" for "--" and use smart quotes?
OSX makes it easy to write em-dashes. It's much more annoying on Windows. I wonder if more innocuous assistants like Grammarly also insert them?
Ditto the directional "smart quotes", OSX inserts them by default (and sometimes breaks stuff like pasting json into Slack).
There certainly are a lot of them in the article.
Yes, super easy. Just shift-option-dash. But I wouldn't do it as people will just assume you're using an AI.
Smart quotes? I hardly even remember that. I turn that off immediately, along with automatic spell checks (which are a headache if you switch between languages).
There's also the phrase: "here’s the real kicker". It's not that English speakers won't use it, but ChatGPT is overly fond of that term and it makes little sense as a subheading in this context.
Earlier today I saw a YouTube video, it audio started with "calm voice, with a sense of urgency" (something like that) and the voice over stars reading the generated script.
I'm so fucking tired of AI generated content. I'd rather read peoples own writing, with all the errors that entail, or a some Chinese guide going through a tutorial in his own broken English, at least that has character.
It makes perfect sense as a header to me. But then, I'm somebody who uses that phrase quite often and have been using it for years, or decades. I really don't see that as much (if any at all) of a "tell" that the content is AI generated.
And the real kicker is, we're ignoring the point that this isn't a binary distinction. Content can be written by a human and an AI collaboratively, where you can't say that it's totally "human generated" OR totally "AI generated".
You can do it obviously, but others have observed that Reddit posts made to AskReddit, AITH and other similar types of subreddit, by AI bots, will overuse certain terms. "here's the kicker" being one of of those terms.
In this blog post there' also the distinct lack of an actual introduction, the author just assumes that we know what it's is about, as if we're missing the actual introduction, i.e. the prompt.
Also look at some of the other posts on the site. The writing style of the Django article is much different, more human if you ask me. The author also have a tendency to forget to capitalize the first after a period, as seen in multiple other posts, but not in this one.
You're probably correct, that this is a collaboration, by an AI and someone who's insecure in their English. That's a reasonable "excuse" for posting a AI generated piece of writing, but due to the bombardment of AI generated content, this actually becomes something that is judge harder, and less valuable, than someone just writing about an interesting observation in bad English.
I use two hyphens and have noticed some websites helpfully converting it to em dash for me...
I agree, I instantly recognized signature ChatGPT-isms. Once I realized it wasn’t written by a person, I stopped reading.
> When did getting a coffee turn into a whole performance?
Literally every time I see or hear anything on the internet about coffee, it's some of the most pretentious and performative crap I've ever encountered. So I'd imagine a very long while ago.
To be fair, good coffee is actually really tasty and different varieties actually have different tastes. So, it’s true than there is a world of potential out of cheap pre-grinded over-roasted bought to be as cheap as possible coffee.
The issue is that there is another world between that and the horribly pretentious and snobbish consumers buying incredibly overpriced cups from trendy places.
But normal people who enjoy quality coffee do exist.
> In Italy, ordering an espresso takes five seconds.
Have you had espresso in Italy? By all measures, the worst coffee I have had anywhere in the world, on the level of instant coffee in 2010 (remember that?).
I personally don’t complain when people emphasize the compelling story of their offerings – it typically coincides with a high-quality brew!
This is like someone accustomed to rubbery, processed mozzarella visiting Italy and complaining that Italian mozzarella has so little flavor and texture.
If someone doesn't like Italian mozzarella, then they don't like mozzarella: what they like is some mozzarella-inspired thing.
The same goes for espresso. In Italy, espresso and coffee have been synonymous for over a century.
Espresso has moved beyond the Italian methods, despite its origins.
Yes, both a Moka pot and a full pressure larger machine handled by someone practiced can produce excellent coffee, but you cannot seriously expect espresso in an Italian city to compete with what is happening in Tokyo, Bangkok, Taipei, Vancouver, San Francisco, etc.
During coffee’s third wave the profession of barista emerged, and Italy took little part in this elevation of craft. There are people who have literally built a career out of what others (Italians included) dismiss as fuss.
Yes, Italy devised some of the original techniques, but that was about sixty years ago, with — I would argue — limited development since.
Drink fifty espressos each in Rome, Milan, (or the villages!), Tokyo, Bangkok, Vancouver then tell me where you think it is best.
(PS — Nice try, but no one says Italian mozzarella is bad; it is incredibly delicious by all accounts.)
There's some failure to comprehend the ubiquity of espresso in Italy here.
When I was a kid, espresso was practically unavailable outside Southern Europe. In Italy, every household had, as they still do, a stovetop espresso maker. In Italy, every city corner had, as it still does, a bar serving espresso.
Whatever Italians consider good espresso, we - who grew up on filter coffee, which Italians do not drink - probably ought to defer.
Is there a better espresso somewhere? Perhaps.
Is it conceivable that Italian espresso is terrible? Nope.
The proposition is as absurd as claiming that Japanese sushi is subpar, or that Swedish dammsugare are the world's worst.
That's in fact exactly what I love about espresso in Italy and some other European countries: It's ubiquitous, fast, cheap (even cheaper if you drink it standing up!), and as a result a commodity and not something pretentious.
I also don't remember ever having had a bad cup of espresso in Italy. If it ever happens, I'll just walk a few steps down the street and chase it down with a decent or good one.
I went to Rome in 2019 and all the coffee I had was pretty decent! It was all espresso, and a lot of Lavazza (not third wave local roaster stuff), but it was all pretty good.
I’m guessing you didn’t travel all across Italy tasting espresso to back up such a broad statement. I’d be surprised if you ventured much beyond a few tourist traps in Rome.