Today, I gave a try to Mac Café. I am a coffee lover. I was probably 6 when I enjoyed my first coffee at my grand parents’. It was only water of coffee, but it was sufficient to make me feel grown-up. Since, I went thru filtered brewed coffee to espresso and now Nespresso.

Sipping espresso is a sensory experience. Seeing the golden foam, smelling the grilled, well rounded flavor, tasting the acidity , bitterness and sweetness of different blends, touching the delicate foam with my lips, feeling the warm darken body flowing on my tongue and along my throat is my ultimate treat. Drinking coffee is a ritual. I need a comfortable place. I don’t need necessarily to get sat down. I can get leant on a bar. But I like welcoming places. Porcelain cups better the taste and flavor experience. The thinnest is the porcelain, the most delightful is the espresso (that’s no joke). Even at home, I like having my saucer and my espresso spoon. I educated myself one year ago to scale down my daily caffeine dose from 3 to 1 cup a day. I enjoy it after my lunch rather than at breakfast. I guess my taste buds are finally awake at noon. When I lunch outside, I always have a look at the coffee machine, the brand of beans they use (usually right beside the espresso maker), and the cup of other customers before ordering mine. For me, Nespresso is the best. Lavazza pods and Illy pods or brewed are fine. It happened I pay €4 ($5.8) for my 40 ml (135 oz) addiction. Needless to say I drank coffee everywhere I traveled in Europe, America, Asia and even Middle East. I enjoy filtered coffees as well when the blend is tasteful.

The first Mac Café I saw was in San Francisco 5 months ago. Let me say it: I’m no fan of Mc Donald’s. I ate there 2 times in the past 10 years, because I had no other choice. Once in India at Delhi on Independance day. Once at Geneva last month. No way I could drink a coffee there, I thought. But, last week, I bumped into it at Carrefour mall in Annecy, a lovely city in the French Alps. The restaurant is nice. You don’t smell this horrible characteristic Mac’s smell of grilled patty and mayo. There is an effort to make the place welcoming with brown and ecru tones, high top tables and lower ones.¬†While an espresso is €1.50 to €4‚ ($1.75-$5.8) anywhere else in Annecy, Paris, Geneva, New York, San Francisco, Mac Café espresso is €1 ($1.40). And it’s worth it. It’s even better than some frustrating €2 or €3  tries that have from espresso only the name, but certainly not the taste. No wonder about the whole experience I was talking about above.

Well the foam is not rich. It doesn’t pass the foam test (Pour your sugar. It must take 10 sec to come across the foam).

The espresso was only the first surprise. The cookie is another pleasant one. French bread is awesome. American pastries are nothing like French ones. But Americans master the art of cookie.

In France, cookies are dry. They are “biscuit” i.e. crunchy as a whole. I really believe that French bakeries must give up cookies to their mother country and concentrate upon their know-how, which is rich enough. Not enough butter, I guess. Mac Café cookies are not bad at all. Crunchy outside, soft inside.

I agree that it’s not San Francisco Specialties’. And It’s certainly not the best cookies ever of NYC Manhattan based Levain Bakery. But the Mac Café white chocolate/ raspberry cookies at Carrefour mall in Annecy are way better than french bakery’s cookies.

Actually, Mac Café is playing on Starbucks’ fields. At first, McDonald’s started with coffee in their fast food restaurant 2 or 3 years ago in France. I don’t know for the rest of the world. It wasn’t a dedicated space. And it was only espresso, and not a whole offer of lattes, frapuccino and the likes.

McDonald’s is probably the only one able to threaten Starbucks’s supremacy. They’re both locust pandemic like. They’re everywhere. A new entrant couldn’t afford enough locations to threaten seriously Starbucks. But McDo has yet the locations, and it’s not big a investment to add Mac Café spaces while Starbucks has yet educated the customer.

I buy Starbucks coffee only in the US. It’s expensive: $2.20 the last time. But as US are not really famed for their “petit noir”, I prefer drinking Starbucks espresso at an acceptable price. You know what? I prefer Mac Café espresso taste (less bitter, more soft on the tongue, same acidity) and I prefer its price .

€2.70 for 1 espresso + 1 cookie. It won’t never be Nespresso or another truly high end brewed espresso. But from today, I rather pay €1 for a mid range Mac Café espresso than more for an unknown surely bad one.

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Author: Gaelle