“Here, smell this,” she tells us. We take our little cannisters of hand-roasted coffee beans, unscrew the lids and then take a deep whiff. Heavenly. Then we exchange our cannisters and inhale again. We discuss the differences in flavours, wondering aloud if we even know what we are talking about, then hand the beans back to the siphonist who proceeds to brew our coffee for us.
It’s a ritual.
Later in the afternoon we order our second cups of coffee. I decide on a hot mug of pandan-flavoured milk coffee; you ask for your favourite ice-drip coffee with vanilla ice-cream, mango cubes and grapefruit sacs. Instead of offering us coffee beans to smell, the siphonist ask us if we would like to take a whiff of the rolled-up pandan leaves or the fragrant and ripe mango. She’s teasing us but with delight in our eyes, we say yes, of course, we would love to.
Pandan. Mango. Yummy.
This could well be a new ritual.