Every child that has grown up in a traditional South Indian household has definitely grown up with some version of early mornings beginning with the fragrance of filter coffee, most often, accompanied by suprabatham or some devotional song played rather loudly by their grandma who’d ‘innocently’ claim to not have realised that it woke everyone in the house up. (But also let’s slip, in the same breath, a lesson about the benefits of waking up early. Pfffft.)
Festival day or work day or any day at all, a singular cup of filter coffee has been a saviour on many an occasion. Even the strictest of matriarchs will soften up and allow you a sneaky cup of coffee in the kitchen before any festival puja commences, breaking the you-can’t-eat-anything-before-it’s-blessed practice, because well, it’s coffee. And you can make an exception.
(Plus, that one cup will keep you going until you can belt some yelle-sapaad after and also avoid a lot of grumpy faces all around, so it’s also a tactical move. Don’t you underestimate the management techniques of South-Indian grannies!)
That’s the beauty of this beverage. It serves as a pre-breakfast wake-up, a digestion staple after, a mid-day energy booster, and in some cases, dessert too in that some people are unable to say their meal is complete without consuming a cuppa. (But more like a tumbla/doura in our case.)
Long before the hipsters were frequenting coffee roasters and people had an opinion on what kind of beans they wanted to roast at home, the ajjis and ajjas of South India has been quietly brewing and perfecting the modest filter coffee.
You’ll often find people complaining about how the coffee in so and so country, or so and so neighbourhood, or made by some other person just isn’t the same as back home. And they’re not being prissy attitude fellows.
(Except of course the ones who insist that real purists consume coffee without sugar and those who say that jaggery or some other sweetener makes the taste even better are wastes. There is no winning this argument, let’s just put it down to personal preference and give it a rest.)
What they’re referring to is not just the drink, but the area, the setting, the temperature, the people who made it and whom it was consumed with, all of that put together. This is why the mention of a cup of coffee invokes such strong sentiments. Now imagine this same sentiment and flavour, but in mousse form, served with another nostalgia-smasher, banana fritters.
Imagine the comfort of filter coffee, that perfect finisher of a meal in actual dessert form, the subtle bitterness of creamy coffee mousse (baked in a coconut shell no less), perfectly offset by the sweet chewy goodness of fried bananas! Because that’s what our Filter Kaapi Pot Du Crême is. Can’t imagine? Ok, don’t want, just pop on over to The Permit Room and put one taste. Oh, what’s that you say? Not doing desserts this week? That’s fine. You can also just come sample our coffee.
Because we love it so much (and love you so much, awww!) we do it is Filter Coffee form and also French Pressed, so that you have you get max-flavour, the kind that only comes from careful measurement and patient brewing.For those whose only association with coffee has been the one you hurriedly grab at a shop on your way to work, we empathise. But there is still hope for you. You know what you need to do.
