Bru's New Guatemala Flavour Coffee. Coz Ek Cup Coffee Ki Keemat Tum Kya Jano [insert name] Babu!

A couple of days ago, we paid a visit to Bru World Cafe. Now please let me tell you what amount of pain we went through, P and I, just to get to the dang place. We went to Andheri West (whoa whoa!) and then got stuck in a traffic jam on the world's most blasted road ever. It's called JP Road and if you ever come to Mumbai and have a friend invite you to this place, don't ever call him. Ever.

Only enemies can call you to JP Road.

Anyway, then we got out of that traffic bottleneck and wound up at the wrong Bru World Cafe. There, we were told that the one we were looking for was another 15 minutes from there.

SO, we finally went in the direction we were told to head in. We found a Pandu aka traffic cop and we asked for directions. He told us going straight would take us to Amitabh Bachchan's bungalow - which is like, totally where we wanted to go. Meh.

So we used some of our shaken instincts and finally figured the road out (much thanks also to the GPS function in my phone). So, Bru World Cafe might actually want to brand this particular store in JVPD as the Cafe-Near-Big-B's-House.

By this time, P was not sure anymore he wanted to go through so much trouble to try a new coffee flavour. The Tam Brahm in him worships Filter Coffee and everything else is a demi-god, a handyman of God even, if you must.

We walked in late, as we had expected, and finally found a few familiar faces. Caramel Wings and Life Ki Recipe were right at the back of the room, like naughty back benchers who usually disrupt the class, giggling away to glory. There was also Thoughts On A Plate, Netra and Anshu Gupta, among known faces.

At the counter, coffee connoisseur (when he isn't being the dedicated HUL employee that he is), Chiranjeevi Giri was explaining how to brew coffee correctly, how to foam it up, how to add a dash of caramel or other flavours you may admire and how to then live of complex coffee love while other lesser mortals gulp cup after dull cup of average coffee.

P, Life Ki Recipe aka Amrita, Chiranjeevi & Caramel Wings aka Ashrita - Coffee Talk

Guatemala is the new Bru flavour, something that HUL decided to release after crowd sourcing on social networking sites, opening up a poll asking people which coffee flavour they wanted next, after the wildly popular Bru Exotica series (Columbian, Kilimanjaro, Brazilian). Guatemala was the unequivocal pick.

We tried it - hot, warm, cold and with a dash of caramel. Sometimes with cookies, sometimes with a little bruschetta on the side and sometimes a little coffee bean chocolate truffle bite.

And the flavour wowed us each time.

How do we have it? Usually on a weekend. A spoonful of Bru Exotica in a cup of water, boiled on low heat until you have a bitter decoction that has had its simmering time to deepen the flavour. A dash of milk, some more simmering until you have a frothy boil. Serve hot, with cookies on the side if you like a bit of bite. And nothing on the side if you are my type and like your coffee without any frills. Gautemala is a flavourful but aromatic coffee that leaves a lovely aftertaste. Smell it, swirl it, and it's almost in the class of wine :)