Turkish coffee on Grand Avenue: Grounds for adventure

by Jay Gabler, TC Daily Planet • June 25, 2008 • Yesterday I was walking down Grand Avenue across from the Macalester campus, still reeling from the mind-blowing discovery that the Tea Garden was out of tapioca pearls (I’m informed they’ve since been restocked), when I spotted a sign advertising, “pound for pound,” the best coffee in the Twin Cities.

The sign was outside Shish Mediterranean Grill & Cafe, an eatery that apparently has been in operation for a couple of years. The interior turned out to be spacious and gratifyingly cool; the beverage menu featured the standard coffee/espresso options as well as Turkish coffee. The enthusiastic server was delighted to take my order for a Turkish coffee, which I’d never tried before. “It’s a very special beverage,” she gushed.

I craned my neck to watch the coffee being made on the stovetop back in the kitchen. The cook heated water in a little golden vessel, stirring sugar and coffee grounds into the water. After a few minutes the cook delivered the steaming vessel to the server. I was expecting the server to filter the drink, but nope—she dumped the whole thing straight into a paper cup, popped a lid on the cup, and handed it to me.

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“It’s not filtered?” I asked incredulously.

“Nope!” she beamed. “It does get a little sludgy towards the bottom. The grounds have been mixed with cardamom, so it has a spicy taste to it. Some people say it tastes like lemon Joy, but I think it’s delicious!”

Whaddaya know…she was right. Right about the deliciousness, and right about the sludge.

I told everyone I talked to yesterday about my amazing discovery. My dad remembered drinking something similar in Turkey back in his Navy days. “You have to be careful with that stuff,” he warned. “It will set you off like a rocket!”

My girlfriend had enjoyed the drink with a Turkish friend and his family. After serving the coffee, her friend’s mother would read guests’ fortunes in the grounds that dropped onto the saucers when their cups were flipped over.

So take a look at the grounds in my coffee and see if you can spy my fortune…but if it’s not, you work for a fantastic publication that’s fast becoming one of the Twin Cities’ premier news sources and a national model of citizen journalism in action, I don’t want to know.