When in Manila, the urban flaneur thrives in the coffee house culture and art.
Good news! The Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf® has joined the artsy neighborhood in Malate Manila.
Celebrated as the capital’s bohemian quarter, Adriatico’s locale is the latest community to be immersed in the whole The Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf® experience. “With our finest custom-roasted Arabica coffee and hand-plucked whole leaf teas, Adriatico’s old-world air comes alive with the addition of the modern-day gourmet delights that The Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf® brings,” shares Walden Chu, President of The Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf® Philippines.
To formally launch its Adriatico store, The Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf® hosted an art-themed gathering on June 1, 2012 in it’s two-storey coffee shop that also features a cozy complementing glasshouse. As a tribute to the area’s famed artist hub, Penguin Café Gallery, the store’s launch presented simultaneous art exhibits and intimate discussions with art installation mavericks Cesare and Jean Syjuco and digital illustration prodigy Dan Matutina.
Coffee drinking itself has social and cultural value. Today, aside from serving coffee, specialty coffee shops serve as places for many people to relax, converse, socialize, study and work. The phenomenal increase in consumption and proliferation of coffee houses have given rise to the coffee culture, referring to the social atmosphere that centers around coffee drinking which is considered a ‘social lubricant’.
Coffee culture probably originated in the early 14th century in Turkish coffee houses where men would gather to converse and socialize, these houses were often frequented by intellectuals. Coffee drinking came into fashion in Europe in the 17th century and later, to America and all over the world. In fact many of the first European coffee houses are still considered important as having served as meeting places for intellectuals such as Voltaire, John Jacques Rosseau and Diderot.
Coffee houses provide the company and the exchange of ideas in a social space exhibiting stimulating and interesting art. This is why coffee shops are considered a major cultural hotspot, or what Elijah Anderson calls a ‘cosmopolitan canopy’ because it is a place where people let down their guard and open themselves to culture and conversation.
In celebration of the art culture in the metro, for one extra special night, the premier café chain’s newest location housed diverse artwork collections of the said artists for guests to appreciate, while the artists talked about the inspirations behind each masterpiece and the subtleties that influenced their work.
Afterwards, guests were served with spiked specialty coffee and tea offerings while mingling in an entertaining ambiance enhanced with techno grooves and house tracks mixed by DJ Joey Santos.
As a status symbol, coffee serves the image of the urban flaneur, writer Charles Baudelaire’s description of the metropolitan pleasure seeker who thrives on the motion of the crowd and conversation. It is argued that coffee ‘flaneurs’ create a space, through the local coffee shop, where they can linger temporarily to spend time in public to strike up casual conversations for a social encounter that offers a glimpse into the life of another, as well as to engage in ‘explicit forms of identity play’, as they attend artistic and social events in the coffee shops.
“As a premium brand that considers crafting internationally acclaimed gourmet drinks and treats a priceless art form, we here at The Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf® invite the community’s artistically inclined populace to feel right at home in our Adriatico store,” says Chu.
CBTL is a welcome addition to the bohemian neighborhood. So find a friend and go to the newest place in town where art, culture and conversations come alive. – When in Manila
One of the biggest privately held coffee chains in the country, The Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf® Philippines has been serving Filipinos with their full selection of signature premium drinks since 2003.
Coffee-drinking and Art Come Alive in CBTL Adriatico
