Foodie Friday - Bulldog Coffee, Toronto

I love coffee. So very much I love that darned coffee beverage.

Sometimes, if I can’t sleep at night, I think about the first cup of coffee I’ll be having in the morning and it makes me feel calm and happy.

I didn’t start drinking coffee until university and I put lots of milk and sugar in it. It was kind of like the gateway. 

Once, I was out late with this guy I really really liked and I drank so much coffee that I actually felt drunk. Has that ever happened to you? Or was I just a weirdo? I know, why can’t it be both.

I’ve drunk so much coffee that I’ve given myself a bladder infection. I remember because I noticed something was wrong while at The Keg. The Keg is not responsible for my bladder infection. But they are responsible for their horrible, horrible ads. Who writes those songs? I have issues with them. Their ads cause urinary tract infections. It is a science fact.

If I don’t drink coffee by mid morning, I get a migraine. I’ve thrown up from coffee withdrawal before.

Coffee is the only reason I am not known as Ellen -the Molasses Woman. 

I am telling you that I am addicted to the stuff. Are you getting that yet? 

I CAN NOT FUNCTION WITHOUT THE DEVIL’S BEAN.

I am not a coffee snob. I mean, at all. But I don’t like Tim Horton’s or Coffee Time. In this I am more of a humanity snob. But I’ll drink their swill it if it’s the only thing available. Desperate times and all.

I like flavored coffee and have consumed hazelnut cream coffee pretty much every day for 20 years. If that makes me a coffee slut, then colour me whorish.

But if I wanna get fancy about coffee, I go to Bulldog Coffee on Granby Street in Toronto.

I like meeting my friend Ryan at Bulldog. It’s our time to catch up, reconnect and talk about our friends and the stupid stuff they do. God.

Ryan, thinking up something hilarious and cruel to say about our friends.

Bulldog owner Stuart Ross  makes the best lattes ever. And with pretty art on top and all that stuff. He’s won all sorts of awards for Best Barista (that’s coffee maestro, not some British lawyer).

Ross at work.

Swan art photo by Haksuti Makata

Ross's masterpiece, photo by Jesse Milns

The beans are a special blend from Central America, South America and Africa, specially roasted for Bulldog with  a unique dark chocolate finish .  Sweet treats are made by Ross and Geoff and the whole darn staff, and are not for the feint of heart. 

That's right. I know the owner enough to get a hug.

cranberry chocolate heart attack pie.

In France this is called bread. In Toronto, we call it delicious.

Scone porn

chocolate dipped cake pops. Uh Muh Gud!!

white chocolate coated red velvet truffles.

I am not feint of heart. I’d mainline those blueberry scones if I could. 

(Geoff was voted Miss Gay Toronto 2011 which is irrelevant to the whole coffee aspect of this blog, but is an interesting fact. Not a science fact. But a fact.)

There is a vast array of espresso based delights with which  you may get your buzz on. 

Ryan's Bulldog Latte

Bavarian Chocolate Latte

Dark Espresso

My choice is the single shot latte, because by the time I get down there I’m already so jacked up on caffeine that if I have a regular latte I’ll be sent spinning into the streets. And not in an attractive way.

The original location is at  89 Granby St, just south of College off of Church St. in beloved Boystown. Hang out with writers, artists, and your new gay best friend. There is now a second location at 55 Eglinton Ave E.

Here,  you can go to meet your future business-man husband.

See you there. You’ll know it’s me because I’ll be posing with a latte. As one does.

This position in awkward and uncomfortable, but makes me look interesting. In a "I've twisted my body in a horrible accident" kind of way.

This latte compliments my ennui perfectly.

And Your Point Is?

You’ve heard of low talkers. And close talkers. And loud talkers. All of them: Awful.

But the one that gets my goat the most is the long talker.

The talker that thinks the he or she is an orating Proust or Dostoyevsky.

The one that uses embellishments where none are needed, details that could have been left out and rambling tangents that are only vaguely connected to the main theme.

I think it’s a power thing.

It’s their way of keeping your attention for much, much longer than the topic merits.

For example:

  

And you just have to smile, nod and at least pretend to give a crap about all the flotsam that accompanies their basic plot.

Just tell me what you mean. Get to the point, already.

It’s like putting doilies on a lace table cloth. Not really necessary and is just confusing.

Just as bad are the Slow Talkers who speak soooooo slowwwwwwly yooooou jusssssst wannnnnnt toooooo puuuuut knivvvvvvves innnnn yourrrrrr eyyyyyyyyes toooooo stayyyyyyy awaaaaaaaake. Let’s put that story in to 3rd gear already.

It’s the prison of conversation. And you can’t get out on good behaviour. In fact the better your behaviour the longer you are in chains. Better to act out. Riot. Chew off your own arm.  Anything to get away.

In literature, sometimes authors get away with this because they are “being descriptive”.  These authors tend to win a lot of prizes and are on those lists of books one should have read.

The God of Small Things, by Arundhati Roy for example, won the Booker in 1997. It was interminable. I liked the main idea and the characters, but, Good God do you have to go on and on about nothing?

I suppose I am not a particularly sophisticated reader. I like a story and characters I can relate to on some level and if I learn something, that’s a big fat cherry on top. I loved the Girl With The Dragon Tattoo books for this reason. 

Interesting characters, snappy plot progression and I learned a little about Sweden and what I should tattoo on a man’s stomach if he wrongs me.

Along these same lines  you have Dan Brown’s Angels and Demons,  the sequel to the ridiculously, vastly and confusingly successful Davinci Code. The plot here moved at lightening speed (yea), the characters are not quite believable, but you WANT to relate to them and imagine that you are that smart, and I learned a bit about the inner churnings of The Vatican. However, I wanted to throw the book against the wall multiple times hoping it would jostle the words into making the damned point already.

I don’t know, Dan, what ARE they going to find at the end of the passage way? Do you really need to spend a whole half chapter (admittedly short chapters), speculating? I mean.... you KNOW what’s behind that door. Let us in on it. Jeez.

Maggie Atwood is a genius at creating a mood without describing every twig on the branch, so to speak. So it Iain Pears and Peter Carey. Fantasy novels are an odd exception to the crime of TMD (too much description). It’s usually about clothes and swords and hearty stews, and rippling muscles. So that’s ok. Otherwise, I prefer the less is more approach to fiction. 

You’d think, then, that I would like poetry, where words must be fully saturated, marinated with meaning, so that they take up as little space as possible. Like a Murphy Bed, but it’s words.

But no. Poetry is not really “my thing”. Even that is too verbose.

To illustrate, why say:

when you could just say:

I suppose you could do it without capital letters and have them be the only words on the page. That would be poetry, I suppose. 

Maybe just a frowny face. That would sum it up for me just fine.

:-(

I guess that was kind of a tangent, loosely related to my main theme. 

Ya, well at least my boring monologues are peppered with drawings and the occasional slam at a celebrity. It’s the only way I can

keep your attention.

Jobs I Could Maybe Do.

I currently spend my days as a mild mannered housewife. I feed the dogs, the cat and the husband (in that order). I wash the dishes and clean the house (ish) and scoop the cat box and deal with the dogs when our awesome dog walker is not with them. I do the household laundry and the grocery shopping. I am friendly enough to the neighbours that they don’t start asking dangerous questions. I actually really like my little situation. It’s pretty sweet and I get to be all Betty Draper, but I don’t smoke and I’m not a God Damned whore.

I’ve had other jobs, of course. 

But there are jobs that I think I’d like, but have not yet got around to training for and making an effort to qualify and apply for. Everything just takes So Much Effort.

I always wanted to work in an office as a receptionist or secretary where I could wear awesome clothes and be really efficient and cool. Maybe a fancy law firm, or the like.  I’d want to be like Joan, from Mad Men, who is awesome and cool and is totally indispensable. 

I could do the accordion part, sort of.

But the fact is, I would be awful as I’m more of a broad stroke person, missing a lot of important smaller details, like the occasional digit in a phone number, writing the wrong amounts on cheques or wearing mis-matched socks, or  failing to brush my teeth.

My mother always wanted me to be a T.V. news anchor, like Beverly Thompson, World’s Best TV  Anchor Ever.

I trust everything this woman reads from a teleprompter

And I did think about doing journalism for awhile while I was in high school. I could be all smart and smug and knowledgeable and better than you. Plus I’d get to hang out with cool and super smart people who are maybe a little undergroundie.  Like Peggy from Man Men.  

But then I realized that I’d have to write about important and complex topics like politics which would require a certain amount of background knowledge, and have an opinion on it all that I could back up with facts and data and whatnot.  Again - So Much Effort. And politics makes me so nervous.  And Peggy can be so irritating. So no news journalism for Elpoo, televised or otherwise.

Hmmm, it kinda looks like I want to live my life on the set of Mad Men. Not really. I think it's more about the clothes.

Not really about the men. Tina Fey was right. John Hamm DOES look like a cartoon pilot.

Or maybe I could have a cooking show with Mary-Jo Eustace. We could call it “Big Boned Girls” and be super bitchy. That would be fun.

I love Mary-Jo.

I did want to be a chef for awhile.  Cooking delicious food for people sounded very satisfying, and I’d be paid for doing something I enjoyed. But then I heard that I’d have to stand on my feet for long periods of time and I hate having sore feet. And I hate washing lettuce. I’d have to do that a lot, I think. I hate having cold hands. 

I realized that while I thought I wanted to be a chef, what I really wanted to do was throw awesome dinner parties for my friends. I’ll get around to doing that some day.

The best would be if I could be a Famous Intellectual Salon Hostess. That way I can do all the things I’d want to do - wear fabulous clothes, make snacks for people, host parties and rub elbows with smartiepantses. And I wouldn’t have to do too much besides maybe run the vacuum and put out the wine glasses. I like this idea. The guests do all the work part of talking and having opinions. I just sit back, pass the canapes and get all the credit in the newspapers. Love this.

I'm totally the one in the blue dress - just pretending to pay attention to the Smartiepants, but really wondering when I should refill the cheese tray.

I read this blog article that talked briefly about the history of salons.  

It’s totally what I need to do. 

I need to find some inner-lechules who want to sit around at my house and say clever things.  I need to find a bunch of people who belong in a Wilt Stillman movie. I’m gonna throw them a party!  

Fancy dresses, but where are the snacks?

No, I need real, live smart people, not fictional ones. Ones who could be witty and charming without a script. Maybe some smart people who would bring a caged Ann Coulter and talk about what a douche she is. That would be kinda fun.

Melinda Gates, Bill Maher, Nigel Barley and Alan Richman discuss the grossness of Ann Coulter. No snacks for HER!

Or I could just continue having the occasional craft night with my friends who are way more entertaining and probably wouldn’t bring Ann Coulter in a cage. I mean, who knows what Ann Coulter eats. Raisins? Minute Rice? Children?

The best kind of intellectual salon is the one with smart people who like talking about the same things that you do.

That's it. My life's work will be my friends and family. They are a lot of work. So much cheese to set out and nattering to attend to.

Yes, my life keeps me plenty busy in a puttering, non-earth changing kind of way.

I'm so glad I've found my calling.