The Perfect Café
The perfect café does not exist, the perfect experience does
A chance journey to the pub on New Year’s Day saw me end up not at the pub, but instead at the Café.
The pub presumably being closed because everyone had enjoyed an amazing New Year there.
The experience was the perfect end and beginning.
The end of my New Year festivities and the beginning of my New Year.
So I resolved then and there to go to this Café again soon to try out the food, which I had been unable to enjoy the first time.
As chance would have it the very next day I had some time to myself to visit this café again.
I ordered food and drink to have a moment of enjoyment all to myself.
The food was delicious, though if I’m honest too rich.
The drink was fun and tasty, not too boozy, but not too puritanical.
Yet I found the experience several times less satisfying than previously.
Now there is the obvious factor that I was on my own and did not have the pleasure of my friends company.
However, when I think back on experiences on my own in cafés this was not the only reason for the experience.
Neither could I blame the staff or the richness of the food.
They were attentive and friendly, the food was impressive and fairly reasonably priced considering it was served in London.
So I will not mention the name of the café at all, as this is not a critique or a food review.
This is an experience review.
And a realisation there is no perfect destination to have a good time by yourself or with others.
There is not a fabled café that will bring your Shakespearean tendencies to the fore, or your conversational skills to a peak.
There is perhaps only the perfect moment, made of the perfect mindset.
I was exploring somewhere new, I had company I liked and the year was stretching out in front of me with endless possibilities.
Ultimately, the café in that moment meant possibility and I attached too much of that possibility to the café and not enough on the unique moment.
A moment I seized and embraced including its imperfection.
This was not where we intended to go, this is not what we intended to imbibe, this was not the ideal.
This was the moment that we conjured great from.
This was not a moment piled with expectation from the day before.
And so I encourage you to go to your experiences with the freshest eyes possible, you may find your worst local eatery to provide your most unexpected experience, maybe…
