[thomassmith65]

What set me off is... well, it's easiest to share some memories:

1970s, early 1980s in America: nowhere to get espresso except for fancy restaurants or italian neighborhood

Late 1980s in Pacific NW, America: quirky little Starbucks chain pops up. Ambience emulates a SF hippie coffee house, but they serve Italian-style cookies and espresso.

1990s, 2000s: Starbuck becomes gigantic corporation. Coffee culture fad spreads. Average American now knows what 'biscotti' are.

Today: "Italians make bad espresso"

And in a plausible future...

2050s: espresso fad long dead in America. Italians carry on same as ever, since coffee there, for generations, has meant 'espresso'

[noirbot]

Sure, I get it! Maybe it is all just a fad that will pass. I don't hold judgement for people who enjoy a more classic espresso, but as I mentioned elsewhere in the thread, I was in Europe most of 15 years ago and you'd essentially get "oh, you're one of those people" looks if you wanted anything but a dark roast espresso. The OP of this thread would likely be as annoyed by trying to get "a cup of coffee" in Italy as in any pretentious city in the world, assuming he doesn't happen to like dark roast espresso.

Both sides can be pretentious. Dogmatic attachment to tradition can be pretentious just like overzealous modernism. I certainly wouldn't order an espresso in Milan and then be upset that I dislike it, but I would find it annoying that it's difficult to find a cup of coffee I do enjoy, just like my British friends find it difficult to find a cup of tea that meets their preference, which I also think is a sub-par way to prepare a drink.

Plus, the espresso fad is kinda already long-dead in America. Sure, there's Starbucks, but no one's really getting a black coffee or espresso shot there. If anything, America's contribution to coffee that has persisted for decades is drip coffee and more recently handbrew pourovers (though Japan and others also contributed a lot there). There's a reason the Americano is essentially just espresso made to taste like drip coffee.

[thomassmith65]

For myself, I'm perfectly content with a bottomless mug of filter coffee from a diner.

Actually: diners! What a good example...

I would find it equally disrespectful if a Spaniard or an Egyptian posted something like "Americans have the worst diner food in the world."

Nobody needs to like the coffee or the pie in an American diner. But if they don't... whatever they like isn't really diner food.

[noirbot]

For sure. I think there's some tragedy in it all just being called espresso. For many reasons, modern espresso machines aren't really producing shots by the same method as a classic machine. Improvements in pumps and temperature controls, not to mention grinders, are producing something that looks the same but may as well be a totally different drink. In the same way that an Americano isn't the same as drip coffee even though they may look the same.