Tim Horton

I'm going to start writing a few memories from some of my trips away over the last year. I haven't done any specific posts covering Toronto or Dubai but hopefully I can bring back some of the good times I had. Today's post concerns Toronto, specifically its awful coffee.

Gareth and I found ourselves in frequent need of coffee. This was partly due to the extremely cold temperatures (windchill brought it to about -28 degrees one day) and partly due to our constant tiredness after staying up late. On the afternoon of our first day there we were just returning to the hotel after 'doing' the CN Tower and the waterfront when we ventured into the coffee shop across the road from where we were staying. It was a branch of a chain called Tim Horton, which can (thankfully) only be found in Canada. We were both freezing so marched in there and had a look at their coffee menu. In fact, you could only order 'coffee'. It wasn't like Starbucks where there are a million kinds of coffee available, here it was simply 'coffee' and that was it. So we got a couple of coffees. We asked for no sugar, and were treated to some staggered looks from the staff. They went off and poured the coffee straight out of a jug which had been sat on a shelf at the back of the kitchen. No machines here. They only cost just over a dollar in any case so we didn't care. We were both gagging for some kind of warmth and chugged the coffees down in double time. Thanks a lot Tim, you're a lifesaver.

The next morning we had to get the metro to go and meet Gareth's mate Mike before we went to Niagara. En route to the station we legged it across the road and picked up a couple more of Tim's finest. This time we weren't suffering from frostbite quite as badly and had more time to actually savour the taste. Unfortunately it didn't taste quite so good this time. Gareth was the most vocal with his disapproval but I agreed that it was bad. We'd also noticed that Tim Horton was everywhere. Branches every few hundred yards in Toronto, adverts everywhere - I mean everywhere. TV, radio, billboards, and a sponsor of the Toronto Maple Leafs. Every hockey game we saw had Tim Horton adverts all round the rink. Even the public rink that we had a skate on had free Tim Horton baseball caps to give away. Crazy.

That evening on the way back from Niagara we all needed a coffee so we pulled over at the first available place, which was - you guessed it - a Tim Horton next to the freeway. Gareth ordered his, had one look at it and then asked if I wanted it. I obliged and took a look inside. The coffee was distinctly orange (weird) but I drank it anyway. It was horrible. This was the last Tim Horton we had, and hopefully the last we ever will. When we complained about it to Mike, he couldn't believe it. "Dude, they have a fifteen-minute freshness policy in there" he said and looked at us like we were idiots. We asked him if that meant that the coffee I just drank had been sat on the side for fifteen minutes. I think he then understood the problem.

Needless to say, we were Starbucks-only from then on.