The World Cafe: Caffeination Nation

If you are a coffee connoisseur-slash-traveller like I am, you will have likely extolled the virtues of filter coffee to those around the world who haven’t tried it - and come back to your home country to wax eloquent about the purity of freshly-brewed coffee and the absolute necessity of a coffee grinder on your kitchen counter. Suffice it to say that the world does not begin and end with filter coffee nowadays for me as much as it used to seven years ago. 

The décor of the World Cafe is gorgeous. With tall ceilings and walls of cyan blue and muted pastels, the atmosphere of the café inside the World Trade Centre is welcoming and airy, particularly in a space-constrained city like Bengaluru. The food menu at café changes every month so there is something new on offer, also in keeping with the concept of the ‘world café’. Past menus have featured bisibelebhath and curd rice. I tried some wraps and sandwiches, and they have plenty of shakes, smoothies and desserts for those with a sweet tooth. Alas, the one item I wanted to try -- an open-faced sandwich with a herbed ricotta spread, topped with chopped apricots, pistachios and micro greens -- wasn’t on this month’s menu. Perhaps next time.

The World Café serves wine as well. For me, the café was all about the coffee experience. The tasting menu had six kinds of coffee on order, and I chose to have them all black (at eight pm – more on that later). I tried coffee from six places of origin as single shots, served in dainty demitasse cups: Coorg, Kenyan, Guatemalan, Brazilian, Colombian, Costa Rican. Served towards the end was an espresso shot of Illy, Italy’s well-known coffee, topped with a caramelly crema. If you enjoy a strong, short pull of coffee that is not dressed up with milk, cream, or sugar, this has to be the smoothest of all. No cuppa joe like an Illy espresso.

Also on offer was civet coffee, but I prefer my java (whole bean or brewed) travel only through my alimentary canal, so I passed on that.

A visit to The World Café is definitely in order if you are a coffeeholic like me. But note to the café: I’d love to see Turkish coffee feature on the menu soon, given this is the World Café. Also, wine-flavoured coffee from Napa. And while we are on that, why not chukka kaapi? Perhaps bulletproof coffee is also in order? And while we are on that, maybe chocolate-covered espresso beans to take away...

A coffeeholic can dream.