“Tea has my heart,” Liz Coleman explained as she sank into a chair under the gold-painted ceilings of the Grand Café in Oxford, England. “But I can’t live without coffee.”
Ms. Coleman, 31, was getting her caffeine fix from an almond milk latte that she sipped during a break from a nearby conference this month. As a British woman of Persian descent, tea looms large in her home life, she said, but when she is out, it is always coffee.
Tea is woven deep into Britain’s cultural fabric, having arrived in the 1650s after Dutch traders brought it to Europe from China. Centuries of tradition made it the nation’s favorite hot drink. But coffee, a longtime rival, has increasingly challenged that status, and a recent survey suggested it had finally ousted tea from its prime spot, setting off a war of statistics as the two industries defend their beverages.
So, is coffee really Britons’ new national drink?
For cafe patrons in Oxford — where historians have traced some of Britain’s earliest coffeehouses, and where a new specialty coffee scene has exploded in recent years — it is complicated.
The Grand Café is on the site of a coffeehouse established in 1650. On a recent morning, the cafe’s owner, Ham Raz, explained that tourists often ordered loose-leaf tea with their sandwiches, scones and cakes, but that British customers typically had coffee.
When he first came to Oxford 30 years ago, he said, “British people didn’t want to take as many risks.”
“Now everybody is doing coffee,” added Mr. Raz, 51. “And people’s behavior is changing.”
The recent coffee boom can be traced to the late 1990s and early 2000s, when mass-market coffee chains, including Britain’s Costa Coffee and American brands like Starbucks, kick-started a national espresso obsession.
But it is perhaps Oxford’s newer coffeehouses, driven by their patrons’ preferences for high-grade, artisan coffee, that can offer a window into the beverage’s rising claim on Britons’ routines — and wallets. At the Missing Bean cafe, Liz Fraser was scribbling in her notebook and enjoying a double-shot cortado.
Ms. Fraser, 48, an Oxford-born travel writer, distinctly remembers her first cup of “proper” coffee.
“I had my first cappuccino in the U.K. in 1998, just after my first daughter was born,” she said, adding that it “felt like stepping into a different country.” Until that point, she had had only instant coffee.
Eighty percent of households in Britain still buy instant coffee for in-home consumption, particularly those 65 and older, according to the British Coffee Association, though ground coffee and pods are rising in popularity, particularly among younger generations. The country drinks about 98 million cups of coffee per day.
The Missing Bean has been serving up cups of the hot stuff since 2009. Since then, specialty coffee culture has boomed as an alternative to the chains on nearly every corner, said one of the cafe’s founders, Ori Halup.
“I…
2023-09-23 10:49:36
Source from www.nytimes.com
rnrn