Coffee Beans at Home, episode 1

With the days getting colder and colder, G and I are becoming more and more reluctant to leave home in the evenings. And so I have devised a few additional stops along the Coffee Beans Trail, very conveniently located in our own well-worn out armchairs (they are from the peak of the Communist era, from the deep and dark cave of the 1970s, so we like to pat their frayed edges and crevices, and call them vintage).

So I figured that in times when you're too scared to blink outside for fear that your eyes freeze shut, we'd use this cosy corner of our flat as a funky cafe (complete with a screaming parrot eyeing us from the kitchen counter), and a testing ground for whatever ideas we could further explore in a real cafe of our own one day... As we indulge ourselves in treats to ease ourselves into winter, I shall pass on to you whatever it is that our taste buds say!

The December special of the Frayed Armchair Cafe can only be one thing:




Gingerbreads! They are all made from the same dough, but I swear that hearts and teddy bears taste best of all.

A while ago we also received samples of Douwe Egberts coffee, so we gave it a go to see how it would get along with a crunchy browned pal as a sidekick. Using our professional cafe equipment, we fixed G a strong espresso from the Black variety, and I got a fluffy chocolate-freckled latte from the Gold variety.



The coffee is a steady, delicate flavour, very smooth on the palate, and as such, makes for a very good morning latte (particularly the Gold variety, which is more mellow), or a really solid basis for your syrup-infused coffees. And it is certainly the best you can get in its price range on the Polish market (11 PLN, 2.5 EUR). However, I must say that fans of rich aromas will not find this coffee particularly remarkable. It lacks in this wonderful quality that good coffee shares with wine; that it can open up, sip after sip, giving up nuances of its flavour.

But then, it turns out that a mild coffee like this stands up very well to an experiment for which, I believe, I would be publicly shot in some coffee-worshipping countries. I mixed up a small dose of it with ground cinnamon, brewed a nice cupful, and smothered it with fluffy milk. It tasted divine! I never thought it was going to work, I somehow imagined that the cinnamonny flavour wouldn't quite brew through. It did! And yes, I will probably be trying to cinnamon-up everything I try all throughout the season.

A Sip of Something Else

Every Saturday morning, as we sit down to breakfast, G and I get carried away and spin a story of what a glorious life we would live if only we could move out of Warsaw to a small town. Slow mornings, your own little yard of herbs, and an apple orchard, friendly shop owners, little vegetable stalls at the marketplace, merry plump-cheeked neighbours waving good morning.

Yes, our idyllic tale always has all those necessary ingredients, and in our little fantasy world everyone living in the middle of nowhere has a job that makes them flush with excitement, cows and horses never poop in the street, and market grannies never try to screw you over when selling their agricultural produce. But, it is very easy to be seduced by a beautiful vision like this when your local grocery store is a giant Real supermarket, where a plain quest for a baguette takes you through a maze of mayonnaise stacks, discounted boy shorts, and, around this season, jingling reindeer and farting Santa figures.

Thus, G and I decided to stray away from this messy chaos, and look for some more local experience somwhere not too far from where we live (if it was to be local in the real sense of the word!). And what better place to stray into than a lovely little street two metro stops uptown from us called Meander Street? We walked up and down the specialty shop-lined pedestrian lane, quite astounded to have found a place like this in our very own district. As we strolled in, they were just putting up strings of Christmas lights between the street lamps. There is a lovely fruit and vegetable shop, a wine shop, a pet shop, a watchmaker's, second-hand boutiques, and at least three butcher's. And amidst all this sits a place whose name very aptly summed up everything that it was for us on that day.

Lyk Optymizmu, or A Sip of Optimism, is a tiny cafe of no more than 5 tables. As you head towards it, on a cold winter day, the bustling street around it will make you feel like you have just entered Dickens' Christmas Carol, and the feeling is suddenly amplified once you step inside the place. D-Ding!, goes the bell above the door, and you immediately warm towards the place.

Whitewashed walls, warmly lit cabinets crowded with cups, coffee jars and tea cans, and an invitingly long counter, at which you will always see locals inquiring after the cafe's apparently famous homemade cakes. On the day we visited, they just began taking in orders for Christmas cakes and cookies, and a bunch of grannies were sitting flustered over a list of possible options. If you get lucky, you might even spot a very glad little girl watching her favourite Scooby-Doo episode on a portable DVD player. We had that luck!

We took a long while at the right-most section of the counter, which displays the fresh baked produce of the cafe. The cakes of the day included, among others, hot apple crumble, traditional cheesecake, and a layered jellycake. After some deliberation, we opted for a chocolate crumble-topped cheesecake and a banana cheesecake, accompanied by our usual set of double espresso and latte.

Yum! I don't think I can possibly tell you how delicious the banana cream cake was. It is light and fluffy, not too sweet, and generously sprinkled with white and milk chocolate shavings. And all this for an incredible price of 5 PLN (1.10 EUR), a price unthinkable in any of the coffee chains in the city centre. Only a few cakes on the menu at Lyk Optymizmu cost more than this, so you will find it hard not to order any sweet accompaniment to your coffee main course. My latte (6 PLN) was fluffy & delicious, and G gave definite thumbs up to his double espresso (9 PLN).

The little star-shaped cookies you can see beside the drinks are a staple of the place. There is always a full basket of these homemade delights just beside the cash register, and they are priced at only 1 PLN (0.25 EUR). If G and I ever have the luck of running our very own cafe, I will make it one of my priorities to add such a lovely treat to every coffee free of charge. They're easy to make and taste wonderful, but most importantly, there is something about their shape and size that makes you feel all cosy and at home. Isn't it funny how one little cookie can determine your impression of the place? I certainly know that we will be spending more Saturday mornings over those crunchy bits of homely spirit. Yum!

Lyk Optymizmu
Belgradzka 46/10
Natolin, Warsaw

Coffee: 4 beans
Ambience: 5 beans
OVERALL: 4.5 beans / 5