Cafe Moka

Back when I was a kid, Sholay was a big thing.  The fact that we didn't know any damn Hindi did not matter.  We wanted to watch that blockbuster, which was not possible in the small town where we lived.

Therefore, during one of our visits to Madras, as Chennai was known then, we decided that we had to check this off the list.  A cousin said that he would take us there--it was an opportunity for him to watch it yet another time!

It was at the Satyam theatre.  We were ready.

Nope. This post is not about the movie.  Non-Indian readers not familiar with Sholay or the actors will be thrilled that this is not a movie analysis ;)

It was in that theatre that for the first time in my life I saw an espresso machine.  (I vaguely recall that the espresso then was actually a cappuccino--maybe because everybody had it only with milk anyway?  And, we incorrectly called it "expresso.")  It was a big apparatus that made a whole lot of noise.

For a kid who helped out his mother roasting the beans in the backyard, grinding the coffee in the night in order for the family to have the morning coffee, being impressed with a coffeemaker was natural, I think.

Over the decades since, I have collected and used quite a few coffee gadgets, and have imbibed gallons of coffee, all thanks to my mother.

A few years ago, my daughter gave me a Moka pot.  In its operation, this is a descendant of the clunky, noisy, and huge espresso machine that I saw at Satyam.

A compartment of water on the bottom of the device is heated by placing the entire thing on a flame. A tube leads up to a circular puck of ground coffee; because the entire device is sealed, as the water boils, pressure forces steam and hot water up through the tube and through the coffee grounds. That pressure brews coffee much more quickly than without the pressure, and the fast-brewed, strong coffee flows into a chamber, to be poured into cups.
This is, not coincidentally, the exact same way the moka pot works, though on a much smaller scale.

The awesomeness is in its design, the simplicity.

By the 1950s, Italian design had some amazing advantages. All of the factories set up to create war materials were at a loss for products to make, as were a generation of skilled manufacturers. Vespa, Fiat, and Alfa Romeo designed incredible vehicles. And Bialetti’s Moka Express, which still boasted a futuristic and clever design, suddenly took off.

It became a hit.

But then we live in a time when people rarely want to do anything ever in their kitchens.  The kitchen is perhaps the most expensive unused real estate!  So, even the simplest of tasks--making coffee--does not happen like how it used to until a few years ago. People get their coffee on the way from shops that sell coffee with words that are alien and bizarre. Or at home, they insert pods into the machines.  The Moka pot and other simple coffeemakers are now endangered species!

Bialetti, the Italian maker of the moka pot, a stovetop coffee machine and one of the most iconic kitchen appliances ever created, announced recently that the company is in major trouble—tens of millions of Euros in debt, unpaid salaries and taxes, revenues that are way down and look to be staying that way. In a press release, the company said there are “doubts over its continuity.”

Ciao :(