{"id":3870,"date":"2007-02-16T00:00:00","date_gmt":"1970-01-01T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lesliedinaberg.com\/wordpress\/?p=3870"},"modified":"2016-01-15T12:14:01","modified_gmt":"2016-01-15T20:14:01","slug":"coffee-confusion","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lesliedinaberg.com\/wordpress\/?p=3870","title":{"rendered":"Coffee Confusion"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"coffee<\/a>I know that a lot of people have been obsessed with Anna Nicole Whatshername lately, or those out of this world diapers that that crazy astronautress road-tripped with (I’ve forgotten her name already), but I’ve been fretting about the real news story of the month.<\/p>\n

In a Consumer Reports<\/a> blind taste test, McDonald’s coffee<\/a> beat out Starbucks<\/a>.<\/p>\n

I know, I couldn’t believe my eyes either: a bunch of blind people thought McDonald’s coffee tasted better than Starbucks. I checked the date on my calendar just to be sure that April Fool’s Day hadn’t come early. Nope. Perhaps I’d entered some kind of Bizzaro world? Taken a wrong turn off the information superhighway? That GPS can be kind of tricky.<\/p>\n

I checked my sources again–the LA Times, the Associated Press, MSNBC, USA Today, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, Chicago Tribune, Shanghai Daily, the Belfast Telegraph, Taipei Times, and of course, Fox News–all ran the story, so it sounded like a legit consumer survey.<\/p>\n

But still, something about it just didn’t pass the sniff test. Perhaps it was the thousands of dollars I’d still have in my bank account if I’d been driving through McDonald’s instead of pulling up to Starbucks for my coffee for all of these years.<\/p>\n

I decided to do some investigating of my own.<\/p>\n

I felt a little strange walking into McDonald’s without having to be talked into it by my son, like I was committing adultery or something. I looked around, but I didn’t see any of his friends, so I wouldn’t have any ‘splaining to do.<\/p>\n

The not unpleasant smell of French fries overpowered any coffee aromas that might have been wafting through the air. The comfy couches and giant plasma screen TV threw me off a bit. If not for that familiar eau de fry bouquet, I might have thought I was walking into an airport lounge, or even, well, an extra Venti, oversized Starbucks.<\/p>\n

Apparently McDonald’s is now going for a “restaurant casual” style of decor to go with its new offerings of Lattes and Mochas. Granted, the Consumer Reports taste testers tried medium cups of coffee without cream or sugar, but that’s not really my cup of tea, so I went right up to the counter to order a Vanilla Latte.<\/p>\n

It wasn’t bad. It didn’t have the pretty little designs in the foam like they do at Northstar Coffee or the “now I’m really awake” jolt of caffeine like you get at Muddy Waters but it was a surprisingly serviceable Vanilla Latte. In the interest of science, I guess I should have had a wine tasting spittoon handy, but I didn’t, and it tasted pretty good, so I drank the whole thing.<\/p>\n

Next stop, Starbucks. Thank God, the decor still looks the same as it did yesterday. After my McVisit to McDonald’s, I was starting to think that hell had finally frozen over. In the interest of science, I got in line (a long line) to order my Vanilla Latte. Uh oh. They’re serving something new at Starbucks: Fancy McMuffins. That’s right, McDonald’s started brewing lattes and Starbuck’s started reheating eggs and English muffins in fancy combinations like Black Forest ham, aged cheddar cheese, sausage, and baby spinach. There’s even a reduced fat version with a cholesterol-free egg, low fat cheese, and turkey bacon, which looks a lot like the yuppie version of a McGriddle.<\/p>\n

It’s like Starbucks is trying to compete with McDonalds and McDonalds is trying to compete with Starbucks and the earth is spinning even further off its axis, and the world as I once knew it no longer exists and I’m getting dizzy from all of this change, and I think I need a little more coffee.<\/p>\n

Make it a McVenti please.<\/p>\n

I’m starting to understand the diapers.<\/p>\n

Originally appeared in the\u00a0Santa Barbara Daily Sound<\/a><\/h6>\n

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