Coffee Brigade Magnet

Back before there were cafes and coffee franchises on every corner, before there were home espresso systems that gleam like aircraft cockpits and coffee makers that do everything but drink a cup for you, there were sleepy people who needed to wake up, and there was Mrs. Samovar. A sturdy and cheerful immigrant from the wilds of what is now Belarus, Mrs. Samovar journeyed to the U.S., bring little else than her omnipresent pipe and a bracing recipe for brewed coffee that earned her the title the Countess of Caffeine. “Black as night and sweet as sin” she’d chuckle in her heavy accent before dispensing dainty cups of her eye-opening beverage rumored to cause full-blown panic attacks in the uninitiated. Soon the town simply slept in withou...