The Quiet Revolution of Thai Coffee Culture
The Auntie With the Kenwood In my neighborhood in Pathumthani, there’s an auntie who has been selling coffee from a cart for 22 years. She uses a Kenwood kettle, hand-ground beans from a local roaster in Chiang Mai, and serves it in tall glass with ice. No pour-over technique, no single-origin declaration, no 40-step menu. It costs 35 baht. That cup of coffee is, objectively, better than half the specialty coffee I paid 180 baht for in a sleek Bangkok cafe with exposed brick and a barista who uses a scale to the decimal point. ...