At NYC Coffee Shops, Real Milk Is Popular Again
I was fascinated, and when I got back to the U.S., I called Meetka, a downtown-based waitress and the author of the above message. It started happening about two months ago, she told me. I noticed that I was using less and less oat milk, and going to the walk-in more and more to get whole milk. Was this just a case of new customers, or maybe European tourists slowly returning to New York? No, it seems: Regulars started ordering whole milk and people who I d assume from the outside were alternative milkers were no longer fulfilling my judgments.
Obviously, something was up. Why had people so suddenly started to turn their backs on the plant-based blends that were, at least for a time, the coolest possible thing to pour into coffee? Meetka suspects part of the problem might be bad press. First, almond milk was too bad for the environment, she theorizes. Now oat milk is much too oily allegedly! but whole milk stays true to what we were told as children: calcium is good for you.
Milk is the food of the gods, or at least the Northern European gods. I attribute my love of milk to my ancestors who eked out their living as pastoralists on the wet, green and fertile hills of what we now call Britain and Ireland. Not a lactose intolerant gene in sight, I’m afraid. LWJ is still trying to get me to switch to skim milk, but that ain’t going to happen. We compromise and I drink 2 percent, which is just ok. Evidently, many studies establish that people who drink skim milk, blah blah blah. Professor Kelleher, the first professor of Irish literature at Harvard and friend of W.B. Yeats, once told me that the strongest men he ever knew lived on nothing but potatoes and sour milk. I prefer cows’ milk, but for all I know goats and sheep produce good milk as well.