On Cappuccino and Standards

“Would you like flavor added to your cappuccino?” asks the cheery girl at the drive-thru.

The sarcastic answer in my head: “Uh, I would like cappuccino cappuccino flavor, please.”

But that would be rude. “No, thanks,” I answer.

Her next question: “Would you like the cappuccino hot or cold?”

Again, my unspoken answer: “I would like the cappuccino at cappuccino temperature. That would be hot.”

But again, I don’t want to be rude: “Hot, please.”

Next question: “What kind of milk?”

That answer likewise ought to be easy: “I would like milk milk. Like the kind that should be in a latte. Did you know that latte is Italian for milk?”

The nice gal’s final question: “What size would you prefer?”

That, too, is simply wrong. There should be only one size of cappuccino. Venture to the home of cappuccino — Italy — and you learn that right away. The standard size is roughly six ounces. For a reason. For good reason.

When my lovely Susan sought a larger cappuccino at Rome’s Fiumicino airport in the summer of 2014, the barista stopped flirting with her for a moment to explain why that wasn’t possible. If she wanted more, he explained to her, she needed to order two cups. “Due cappuccini, per favore,” became part of her vocabulary. (RELATED: The Joy of Living: Starting the Day Wrong Is in Your Hands)

As it should have. This isn’t a stingy, nitpicky thing, you see. It’s about the art of making a cappuccino — or anything of value worthy of care and craftsmanship. Cappuccino is a drink with a history and tradition, best made with a designated amount of espresso beans and milk. Exactness matters.

Now, before you crankier readers denounce me as some effete coffee snob or (worse) emasculated, limp-wristed soy boy, please understand that there’s a deeper point here. I’m talking about standards, about maintaining and honoring language, about meanings having meaning. Conservatives seek to conserve. It’s progressives who want to change everything, including original meanings.

You don’t mess with a set standard for excellence or with what something is. Ciabatta bread is, well, ciabatta. If you order Tiramisu for dessert, you don’t expect to receive a stack of cherries and whipped cream on top. That wouldn’t be Tiramisu. That would be bunkum.

If you’ve been to Italy or a really good coffee shop anywhere that’s committed to maintaining standards, you’ll encounter baristas (an Italian word) who take their job very seriously. They consider themselves craftsmen, artisans, like chefs at a high-end restaurant.

Asking them to add “flavor” to your cappuccino would be like going into the best steakhouse in New York and asking the cook for a bottle of ketchup with your prime rib, or like taking a fine wine from the steward and sweetening it with a can of Pepsi.

My favorite job was working in a pizza shop in Butler, Penn., in the 1980s. It was called Sirena’s Pizza. It was run by Sicilians right off the boat. We made not only pizza the proper way, as it was baked in the old country, but calzones and stromboli, too. I shudder when I go to pizza shops that offer a half-dozen different ways to construct a calzone — to the point that it’s no longer a calzone but stromboli. (For the record, calzones have ricotta cheese and no sauce inside.)

But in America, we’re so accustomed to “have it your way” (the old Burger King ad) that when you order your coffee, you design it your way, to the point where the cappuccino you order isn’t a cappuccino. It’s some damned cold drink with three ounces of caramel syrup added and approaching the size of the 64-ounce Mountain Dew that customers poison themselves with at the local convenience store every morning.

I’ve spoken to managers at good coffee shops that make real cappuccino about how they regrettably had to change/lower their standards because customers complained so much. In order to stay in business, they had to cater to demands. So, they sell cold cappuccino with chocolate syrup.

Even a place like Starbucks, which is supposed to be the top-line coffee franchise in America, messes with its cappuccino. A Starbucks cappuccino is some foamed-up fabrication that looks and tastes nothing like the real deal. Starbucks also plays fast and loose with a macchiato.

Then again, I suppose we shouldn’t be surprised by this at Starbucks. I walked by the local Starbucks at One Oxford Centre in Pittsburgh this past week and saw one of those crazy rainbow/arrow/Pride/BLM/BLT/LGBTQIA+ whatever flags hanging behind the counter. These are people who invent their own genders — gender “fluidity.” Changing the definition of a macchiato is small potatoes by comparison. (RELATED: Conservatives Should Begin Eating Woke Culture for Breakfast)

Which brings me to the ultimate point of this column. If you were thinking I was merely whining about cappuccino, you would be wrong!

What this really is about is standards. About words meaning things.

This is a society that — to borrow from the unforgettable Boy Clinton — has presidents who argue over what the definition of “is” is. We have highly educated female Supreme Court nominees who can’t tell you what a woman is. Speaking of high-court opinions, long before the dopey Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, we suffered the dopey Reagan appointee Justice Anthony Kennedy arguing in his infamous “mystery clause” that “At the heart of liberty is the right to define one’s own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life.”

That idiotic statement from Kennedy in the 1992 Planned Parenthood v. Casey decision would have been laughable if not so deadly. It preserved Roe v. Wade as the law of the land for another 30 years, ensuring tens of millions more abortions until the Blessed Samuel Alito gave us the Dobbs decision in 2022. An achievement for which Justice Alito’s mug merits Mt. Rushmore.

And then there’s art. The Left insists that the homoerotic fantasies of a Robert Mapplethorpe represent a new pinnacle of sophistication, as does “Dung Mary,” which some progressive sucker purchased for $4.5 million. The highbrows can sniff that this is “art.” But these “works” required even less talent than that twisted, tortured blob of metal that some maniac erected for the remainder of eternity in your local town square. Michelangelo’s Pieta will captivate hearts and minds forever. Andres Serrano’s “Piss Christ” is remembered only for its outrageousness.

Which brings me full circle. There’s also an art to making cappuccino. A real cappuccino. Despite what everyone else says or does.

Alas, as we’ve long put it at The American Spectator, the crisis continues.

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