6

While having coffee at a fancy café earlier, we noticed that the espresso aswell as the cappuccino had large amounts of coffee grounds still sitting at the floor of the cup.

While being annoyed by this (given that the coffee was rather expensive), I still wasn't quite sure if this was intentional or not. For example, i reckon this could be expected when having a turkish coffee.

Question: Is there a good reason to leave coffee grounds in an espresso on purpose, or is it just sloppy?

Martin Dreher
  • 163
  • 1
  • 4

1 Answers1

5

Two possibilities:

  1. It's just sloppy. They're dispensing directly from the espresso machine into the cup, and as a result the finest particles that should be poured off, with proper technique, ended up in the cup. Given that the main reason to dispense directly in the cup is that they're using a super-automatic (push-button) machine, I'd be pretty unhappy with that if I'd paid a lot for it.
  2. They're deliberately leaving the fine particles in the pour to "prove" that it's real espresso and not a Nespresso capsule. This seems misguided to me, but I can imagine someone doing it.
FuzzyChef
  • 58,085
  • 18
  • 142
  • 218
  • 3
    Nespresso capsules sometimes rupture and leave grounds in the cup, in fact the question made me wonder if it was a sign the place *was* using a capsule system. – Spagirl Jun 01 '18 at 06:29
  • 3
    And a classic espresso machine pours espresso straight into the prewarmed cup. – Stephie Jun 01 '18 at 08:58
  • Stephie: not usually at restaurants or coffee bars. There, you'll see them dispensing into a small metal pitcher and then pouring from that into the cup, partly to prevent having any "sludge" at the bottom (and partly so that they can do various pouring things to make it look nice). Sure, I'll pump directly into a cup at home, which is why I know that you can get a slick of coffee grounds that way. – FuzzyChef Jun 09 '18 at 23:49