Café con pan dulce: a Venezuelan classic

It may seem banal to the rest of the planet, but for any Venezuelan, being able to eat a sweet bread with a coffee with milk, tastes like everything: the love of family, the memory of the doting grandmother, the evenings with friends and why not, the first love!

Being an immigrant, I have lost many of those things, so one nostalgic afternoon, I decided to enter a space to rest from the sun that is already starting to be harsh (at least for me) and also buy something refreshing while working on the agenda for the week.

Just at the entrance of the place I saw a promotion that offered coffee, croissants (sweet croissants) and a glass of juice, for 2000 pesos (approx. 2 $). It seemed accessible to me, in addition, the site caught my attention because I had never entered, so I went in without thinking.

When the order arrived I found it very funny to combine coffee with orange juice, because I felt like I was having a movie breakfast! But when I tried the coffee with milk, it teleported me to my university years, when my relationship with this drink began.

It was really an astral journey, which took me to tour my childhood and the time when my grandmother fought with my mother to let me drink it, because that was tradition in the family. Also, the afternoons of coffee with my friend Isabel and then with Rhamnyela, two powerful bastions that life has given me.

And to the astonished gaze of those who were watching me in the place, I had the audacity to break a piece of the croissant and dip it in the bread! The girl who was diagonal to me couldn't believe it! while I, like a mischievous child, enjoyed doing this which is so typical in Venezuela.

To enjoy it as much as possible, I savored each piece of croissant soaked in coffee; it was like recharging the batteries after a long day of work, and even more, it was renewing the ties with those with whom I have not had physical contact for a long time.

How incredible it was that something so particular awakened in me so many things! It enhanced my roots, it was like a grounding cable in foreign land.

This coffee has been the most similar in taste to the ones I used to drink in my country, because in some places they taste a bit more bitter than the ones in Venezuela.

It may not sound so "amazing" because it is so common to enter a place to have coffee, but very few times I have tasted a drink that would awaken in my senses so many flavors and memories, that for me, this gustatory experience has been the most fantastic and sensory experienced in many years.