Dropped by my new favorite neighborhood coffeehouse yesterday, Black Hole Coffee, for Happy Hour. Yes - Happy Hour in a coffee shop. It's just about the greatest idea ever. (Though I might also contend that every hour in a coffee shop is Happy Hour.) Monday-Friday, 4pm-7pm, free coffee with the purchase of a pastry or brownie or some such item (free coffee? those are two of my favorite words, right up there with incognito, serendipitous, and riboflavin).
So I got the brownie, which was really more like brownie cake, the size and shape of a slice of apple pie on my plate. Or like the brown Arts & Literature piece for a really giant game of Trivial Pursuit. Sat down with a book (Sherman Alexie's The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian; highly recommended), a cup of coffee, the enormous brownie. It was OK (how can a brownie not be at least OK?), but there was something odd about it. Some flavoring that one doesn't usually encounter in a brownie. I couldn't put my finger on it...but I eventually put my tongue on it. Between my teeth, that is - I put my tongue on the odd flavor by extricating a foodbit from between my teeth: bacon.
Now, don't get me wrong, I like bacon as much as the next guy. But in a brownie? Please. Don't mess with my coffee, and don't mess with my chocolaty dessert treats. Shouldn't there have been a warning on the brownie, at least for vegetarians? (Not that I'm a vegetarian myself, but I'm trying to rally some allies in the fight against the bacon-brownie.) Next time, I'll play it safe with the blueberry muffin.
