Fuzzy and I are lucky enough to live close to Metropolis Coffee, a local roaster, and in my opinion, the best coffee/ coffeeshop in the city. On special mornings, we drive down to Granville, get coffee, and then Fuzzy hops on the train south and I drive north to Evanston. On special nights before bed, I will ask Fuzzy if the next day can be a Metropolis Morning, and that will be my motivation to get out of bed when the alarm goes off. I love everything about it--the baristas (they know our names and when we aren't there for a while!), the coffee, the food, etc. For years, my favorite thing they had was Ginger Coffee, which was their regular brewed coffee with fresh chunks of ginger in the cup, so the hot coffee would steep the spicy ginger flavor. It was so good! Then one sad and tragic they, they stopped making it.
So, I toodled around for a while getting iced lattes and Americanos, etc etc, until one day, they had a special drink of the month.
It was called something French and beautiful, like the l'frene or something. It was a 12oz soy latte with homemade lavender and rosemary syrups.
LAVENDER AND ROSEMARY SYRUPS!
I was in Heaven.
I was happy with the l'frene for a while, but one day, I decided to be a little kooky and order it iced. The barista at the counter didn't know how to enter it in, since there was just a special "drink of the month" button and he couldn't delineate that I wanted it iced. So I ordered a 16oz iced soy lavender and rosemary latte. And my life was forever changed.
The best way for me to describe this beverage is "soft." (And that, Greg, is 'soft.") Or "sweet," but not the sugary meaning of the word, but more in the Holly Hobby Shabby Chic White Eyelet Baby Kittens type of way. It was like a soft breeze. Like curling up in a bed with a crisp down comforter...like walking barefoot through a field of dandelions while wearing a long flowing white dress. This drink was unlike anything I had ever had. I wanted one every day. I told everyone about it. In April last year, when I was in NYC with Shannon, one night before bed, I told her about it like I was reading her a bedtime story. I couldn't stop thinking about it. I called this drink "my best friend."
We tried to recreate the syrups at home (Fuzzy is a master simple syrup maker) but didn't have a lot of success. Eventually, the l'frene wasn't the drink of the month anymore, but I kept ordering my special beverage. One day, they ran out of rosemary syrup, and I just had it made with the lavender. It was wonderful.
Then the saddest of days arrived. They stopped making their own simple syrups. And they were out of lavender. If I had had a camera following me around, it would have cut to an overhead spinning shot above me and I would have yelled "NOOOOOOO!" with my fists in the air.
The last few months have been fine...I've been mainly kicking some iced soy lattes, etc etc, and that's great, too. But yesterday....I saw something special. On the handwritten syrup board was the most glorious vision to my eyes....like a whisper, it said "lavender."
OH MY GOD.
It's like a reunion with an old friend. It was like not a day had passed since we'd been apart.
When I have this latte, I cannot describe what happens to me. I become a weirdo drinker. I don't EVER take it for granted by just slurping it down with a straw. I take my time with it...get to know it a little bit. I take a sip through my straw very slowly, blocking off most of the straw with my tongue, so that it lasts longer, and then I sort of just hold it in my mouth for a second and swirl it around in there before I swallow it. If that sounds sexual, well then, so be it. It's a damn amazing latte....I just can't express that enough.
I had a 16 ounce yesterday, and a 20 ounce this morning, and I kind of want to order TWO 20oz tomorrow. It is never enough. I wish I had it as an unlimited latte...always cold...always full. Like a cornucopia of iced latte. That would be a dream come true.
And then, Fuzzy and I can go on vacations with it...walk on the beach together...grow old together...and...and...
Ok, I'll stop.
Thank you, Metropolis. Thank you for the iced soy lavender latte. I am forever changed.
There is so much I love about this post.