A Tall Order
My very first sip of Starbucks
I remember it like it was yesterday. It was June of 2005— a hot humid afternoon in the southern slice of Jakarta.
I was an awkward 13-year-old boy with a bad temper and an equally bad haircut.
Me and a group of friends were heading to Plaza Senayan (a shopping mall) to check out a coffee store that was becoming very popular in town.
It was called Starbucks.
When we arrived at the store, I remember looking at the prices on the menu and thinking to myself: Who would spend this amount of money on a cup of coffee?
It looked very expensive to me, especially as a 13-year-old back then.
But the Starbucks logo had a picture of a nice green lady with nice wavy hair. So I decided to give it a shot.
The line moved very quickly until it was my turn to order — just a few minutes or so.
I walked up to the barista and asked him what the favorite drink was.
“Frappuccino Sir!” — he said.
I told him “I’m sorry I don’t speak Italian, but I’m doing good thank you for asking.”
“No Sir…” — he said. “Frappuccino is not a greeting, it’s the name of the drink!”
“Oh, right…” — I said.
“Okay… lemme get the Frabbuchano… but just the small one please.”
“We have Tall, Grande, and Venti Sir!” — he said with a big smile. “Which one would you like?”
“I don’t want the tall one…” — I said. “Just give me the small one…”
“Our Tall one is the small one Sir!” — he said with an even bigger smile.
I was confused. I didn’t know what to say.
I looked at him. He looked at me. He was giving me a never-ending smile worthy of an Academy Award for Best Fake Authenticity in A Coffee Shop.
How can the tall one be the small one? — I thought. Do the laws of mathematics and geometry work differently in Italy?
“Fine…” — I finally said.
I didn’t want to spend all that money on a tall drink, but I didn’t want to argue with the guy either. “Fine… Just give me the tall one”.
The Frappuccino took surprisingly quick to make — just a few moments or so.
The guy with the creepy smile handed me the drink (which looked surprisingly short for a ‘tall’ sized cup — I thought).
I stuck in that iconic green straw that Starbucks used to have back then (before they switched to the paper straws to save all the dying sea turtles).
I sipped a little bit of the mysterious milkshake-like liquid into my mouth and was instantly mesmerized by the taste.
It was like love at first sight.
I could hear the intro of George Michael’s Careless Whisper in the background as the mixture of diabetes-inducing ecstasy and coma-inducing intensity danced around my tongue.
“Wow!” — I shouted to my friends. “This tastes Amazing!”
I looked back and made eye contact with the barista from afar and gave him a ‘two-thumbs-up’ for a job well done.
He reciprocated with another ‘two-thumbs up’ to me from afar — still with that wide creepy smile like he was auditioning for the lead role in Joker 3.
“Is it really that good?” —one of my friends asked me.
“Yeah it’s fantastic!” — I said.
“What’s it called?” — he said.
“Frabochianini!” — I said with a forced Italian accent.
“Frabbo-who?” — he said.
“Fra-Bo… Cianino?” — I clarified once more, this time with an even more ridiculous Italian accent.
“That’s not a greeting in Italian, you know… it’s the name of the drink…”