ERROL PARKER | Editor-at-large | Contact
Bought during the expresso [sic] martini craze early last year, the coffee machine at the Cashew & Pogostick Hotel in Betoota Heights has been getting a work out recently – the most use it’s had since last July, says publican Jackie Stephens.
“So much so, we ran out of coffee cups last night and had to use pots. We had a group of young fellas come in from the soccer club to watch the big England game last night and they were ordering pint after pint of long black,” he told our reporter.
“We didn’t even know what to charge for such a drink. We offered to spice it up with a bit of Jameson’s or Bundy but the charmingly-weak-chinned Englishmen politely declined,”
“I guess this might have something to do with all those self-loathing, defeatist people who do Dry July.”
The popular publican said in all the years he’s been trapped in the hellish quagmire of wage theft and zero-job-security that is working in hospitality, he’s never seen such a large quantity of cheap java go over a bar.
“You know most of the time when folk order an espresso martini here, we just use two teaspoons of International Roast, two shots of Comrade vodka and top it up with salt water from the Big Blue Bin, which is what we in the know call the Coral Sea. Have a bottle of wine then tell me you’d be able to tell the difference between that migraine in a glass and the Real McCoy.”
However, Jackie said he plans to retrain his staff this coming Monday to help them with the rise in coffee orders.
He said they might even begin to offer milk with coffee this week just like they do in more cosmopolitan parts of the district such as Quilpie and Toompine.
More to come.
