Lard.
Also oregano. I know some Mexican cooks who swear by adding sweetness in the form of cola or orange Fanta. Lard for beans for sure. Goya sazón?
More secrets ELLOS don’t want you to know!
With Gen Z and on TikTok, Matcha is HUGE. It blew up all of a sudden as a cleaner, healthier, earthier alternative to coffee. Coffee shops everywhere in my city started pivoting to matcha, and new Matcha Cafe’s are popping up every month. It’s gotten to the point where it’s causing a matcha shortage around the globe, especially the high quality ceremonial grade matcha, which is seen as the only option for these youth because it’s the “healthiest.” The worst part is that all of these Instagram influencers are drinking ceremonial grade matcha with ice, milk, sugar, AND syrup, which ruins the complex flavors that earn it it’s praise. It’s massive, but who knows if it’s here to stay?
My father and step-mother moved to Jersey City/NYC in ~1991 after decades in CA (my step-mother had never lived anywhere else). It was the first thing that bummed them out - not just no decent (SF Bay Area-style) Mexican food, but also things like no soft corn tortillas in supermarkets. They even had those and coffee beans from Peets shipped out to them in care packages 
. By the time they finally returned to CA ~2007 that had reversed itself and decent Mexican restaurants were to be found, if still not quite as plentiful as out west.
Maybe it’s no so much a “food” as a “spice” but super hot peppers are fairly new and seem to be everywhere now. Prior to 2000, the hottest pepper in the wider culinary world was a habanero. Then we discovered the ghost pepper, and all bets were off. Hottest this, hottest that, death chips, etc.
You mean crescent rolls?
The “garage”? Hey fellas, the “garage”! Well, ooh la di da, Mr. French Man.
How about (so-called) Taiwan mazesoba?
Wikipedia claims it was “popularized” in 2008.
No, Chronos is right. Starbucks is hardly pretentious. I checked the prices of coffee at my local McDonald’s. A large is $2.29. An equivalent large (20 oz venti) at Starbucks is $3.25. A Dunkin is $3.29 (!). A Peet’s large is $4.05.
Starbucks does sell what I think of as dessert drinks, but that’s because it’s morphed over time from a coffeehouse to a dessert place that happens to sell coffee. And, yes, you can order normal coffee at Starbuck’s. I do all the time. And, yes, I’ve even ordered it using plain English terms like “medium” without the barista insisting I speak their brand language.
But pretentious? Pshaw. Hardly. I don’t like slapping the term “pretentious” on businesses, but the coffee houses around here that may fit somebody’s definition of the word would include places like Intelligentsia, La Colombe, Anodyne, maybe Stumptown Roasters. I’ve occasionally heard Peet’s get that label (though I don’t agree.)
Chronos also said (and I agree) that being overpriced isn’t the same thing as being pretentious. I haven’t been to Starbucks in many years, but when I refer to it as “pretentious” I mean the kind of thing shown in the video clip from @LSLGuy (post #136 or thereabouts) at around 5:30. When I want a cup of coffee, I want to be able to say, gimme a cup of coffee, cream, half sugar, and that’s the end of it. I don’t want to hear a litany of incomprehensible names of incomprehensible overpriced coffee-based concoctions. Again, I haven’t been to Starbucks in many years, but if it’s possible to go in there and say “gimme a cup of coffee” and get no “barista” pushback on that, this is news to me.
I haven’t been in about a month or two (my kids like their fruit drinks–I think they’re called refreshers), but, yes, you can do that. I mean, they’ll ask you what size, as any place would, but you don’t have to use their terminology. I used to go to Starbucks weekly to meet with prospective clients. They were always very nice about letting me use their space as a temporary office, even though literally all I ever ordered was drip coffee (and sometimes even forgot to order anything, so just used the space for free.) The sugared-up drinks don’t make me think pretention. They make me think Baskin-Robbins with coffee. Or a juice bar. There’s nothing high-class or trying to be above its stature that I get from Starbucks. It’s just another fast-food/drink establishment to me.
I don’t want to be an apologist for Starbucks, but this is just some stupid stand-up comedy trope that has little relation to my own reality in dealing with the company.
For me, it was a combination of the traditional midwest '50s diet of overcooked meat and overcooked vegetables, and me being a picky eater.
After college, I lived with adventurous gourmands. I think we tried everything in the Mennonite More With Less Cookbook.
I loved waking to odd smells… like smelt for breakfast.
That’ll dox me if any of my roommates are now Dopers.
Now I frequent coffeeshops that are quick to add a new trend to the menu: they were the first place I saw avocado toast (with other junk and a fried egg on it).
And I just had Artisanal Sourdough with Hot Honey (thick and cayenne-ish). Trendy but tasty…
My mother, God bless her, though she did make amazing ethnic foods like cabbage rolls and perogies, also had a tendency to overcook meats and veggies. She’d do things like buy the best steaks and then ruin them by overcooking to a dry grayness because “food safety”. I shudder to think how she would have reacted to the concept of sushi, or steak tartare. It wasn’t until I left home and started cooking on my own that I realized that “steak” was actually something tender and tasty.
This made me LOL.
My mom could make ten things extremely well and beyond that was not a good cook. However, she did enjoy and cook three spicy dishes, which was unusual at the time. (One I have never seen replicated outside my mother’s kitchen).
When I complained about her version of burgers or pasta, she invited me to cook my own. Being stubborn, I did. I was a fairly good cook by the age of ten. So that turned out to be good for me.
I always avoid chain stores and eateries (I wish it was out of a strong moral compass, but I just want better food and drinks).
So in a week’s vacation, I’ll try at least seven funky local coffee shops. Well, our usual destination is Seattle, and I realized that there, Starbucks IS a local coffee joint.
I hadn’t been in one in a decade, so tried it and… it was utterly normal.
No “ineffable coffee experience” like my sister goes out of her way for, but also no “Those jerks burn the beans and make you say Venti” indignation either.
In fact, I can close my eyes and replay the taste of Dart Coffee, Anodyne, or Cafe Deko. But I don’t remember the cup I got at Starbucks.
Completely normal sums it up well. Many will say burnt coffee, even though I do not agree since they changed their house roast to Pike’s Place about a decade ago. (Previously, I would ageee. Besides, they have blonde roasts there now, which is what I usually get.) If I want really good coffee, yes, I go to Intelligentsia or LaColombe or someone that uses their beans.
But have you tried Lobster Thermidor aux crevettes with a mornay sauce garnished with truffle pate and brandy, with a fried egg on top and spam?
I wonder if anyone has ever tried to actually produce that?
It’s such a favorite complaint of Boomer males. Even though it has no actual basis in reality.
I have to say, as someone who “grew up” with Starbucks — having reached adulthood around the same time they started to get popular, back in the 2000s — they did offer a pretty comfy experience. Back then, there weren’t many urban “third places” where people could hang out together outside of home and work/school. Starbucks offered a cozy refuge for students doing homework, old folks reading the morning paper, businesspeople having impromptu meetings, etc., in a clean and safe environment, for the price of a latte.
Whether their coffee was phenomenal or a great value wasn’t really ever the point, IMO. You could always get better or cheaper coffee elsewhere, but if you wanted to meet with a group of friends, especially younger ones, it sort of became the “default” location. They spent a lot of time dialing in the stores’ music, lighting, table arrangements, wi-fi speeds (especially important back then), etc., and were always quite generous with their refills, good at customizing orders, and let you stay as long as you wanted without question. The official corporate stores (as opposed to franchised airport, bookstore, Safeway, etc. locations) really got that down, and the vibe is quite noticeably different at the non-corporate stores. Anyway, it was probably expected that you would stay at least a few hours. At the time, it was very much a place-focused product that just happened to sell coffee and light bites.
Their few competitors were other coffee shops (but we always found Peet’s eerily empty and full of older, rich people), bookstores (hit or miss, in locations, seating, lighting, ambient voice level, etc.), and libraries (too quiet). Starbucks just had that perfect blend of casual comfort with just enough welcoming ambience to be “corporate cozy” without being overbearing. That strategy worked well enough that many other bookstores and coffee shops started copying their feel.
During college, I worked there for a summer, and it’s still one of my favorite jobs. Starbucks had by far the best training I’ve ever had at a job, retail or corporate, and actually spent a lot of time (relative to the pay and job expectations) training their baristas on checking the drip timers regularly, how to set the perfect grind setting, steaming milk perfectly, latte foam, drink ratios and pour techniques, etc. They even had a “black apron” certification program where baristas could train for several months to learn more advanced roasting, brewing, etc. techniques. My bosses and coworkers at Starbucks put more thought and care into both the drinks and the customer experience than most of my subsequent jobs would.
Made a few good friends back then… and flirted & texted way too much with one particular customer… god, lol, I was so young and dumb and shy back then… anyway, I digress 
The point is that it really filled a community void at that time & age, providing a nice third space for many who otherwise wouldn’t have had one.
Decades later, COVID would force them to completely change their business. That coziness is long gone. Most of their stores pivoted to online ordering and drive-thru/walk-thru pickups, and even now, online pickups account for more than half of most stores’ sales, from what I read. That means instead of customers walking in, saying good morning and hanging out for a while, they just anonymously walk in, pick up their labeled drinks from the counter, and leave. It’s pretty sad, because that need for a community gathering space is still there, and there’s not always another operator to fill in. Starbucks is actively trying to convert some of their stores back to the older community style, but they seem to have missed the recovery window and the chain is really struggling these days, from what I understand.
Some towns are lucky enough to have independent coffee shops (which can vary greatly not just in coffee/product quality but the physical attributes of the storefront). Yesterday’s Starbucks kids became today’s remote workers, and in my town at least, they tend to congregate at the few coffee shops that have the (actually pretty hard to find) combination of good and adequate seating, lighting, ambient noise level, wifi, power outlets, and “good enough” coffee. Other coffee shops try to provide a more laptop-free, euro-style sit-down conversational place (and good for them for doing that), but Starbucks did a lot of early pioneering and US market-testing to make way for all these subsequent niches.
And they really aren’t pretentious (at all, I think… just thoughtful and careful, but in a customer-centered and not holier-than-thou way), especially compared to more modern chains that do focus on the coffee product more than anything else, like Philz (now THAT is pretentious… you go to a store and there’s a line of coffee snobs around the block, each drink takes like fifteen minutes to make as each barista lovingly crafts every drop of your pourover or whatever newfangled thing there is). But their stores have harsh lighting and poor seating, not to mention horrible overcrowding, making them not very nice places to hang out at, IMO. The coffee is way better, but it feels so awkward being there, like you’re a poseur for not having memorized all the tasting notes by origin.
Whereas Starbucks was a gateway drug to “I need to find a coffee shop with a power outlet and comfortable seating to work at for a few hours”, Philz was a gateway drug to “I’ll need my own $2000 espresso machine for my civet poop beans that I’ll precisely grind with a mortar and pestle, measure to the mole, gently brush off with a specialty coffee comb and massage with my espresso acupuncture kit before sending them to pressure-controlled spa”. It’s a whole different mindset…
Anyway, sorry for the essay, lol (I’m allowed to hijack my own thread, right?). Just have some very fond memories of those coffee shops, and wish we still had that vibe on a national level. A select few Starbuckses still have that feeling, but the majority of them are now just drive-thru/pick-up places hollowed out and turned into caffeine assembly lines 
Their communities are worse off for it, IMO.
Ranch Water is basically a Gin Rickey, but with Tequila. It’s blanco/silver tequila, lime juice, and sparkling water served with ice. Some may say that you must use Topo Chico, but that’s silly.
It’s a highball, and the idea is that the tequila is pretty diluted by the sparkling water and lime juice, and as a result, the whole thing is pretty refreshing.