Before there was
Starbucks, Peet’s Coffee, or Seattle Coffee, there was Grandma’s Coffee. Before
the farm-to-table movement gained momentum, before locally grown, locally
roasted coffee became uber-hip in Hawaii and elsewhere, Grandma was growing her
own coffee cherries and roasting her own beans on the slopes of Haleakala
Crater. This was in 1918.
The sign at Grandma's Coffee House, a Maui landmark. |
Grandma was before my
time, like so many things on Maui. I imagine a wizened woman with gnarled
fingers stooped over a table, prying the coffee cherry pulp off the cherished
bean inside, one by one. The patience of a saint. I’ve watched friends separate
the coffee beans from the coffee fruit. It is mindrackingly slow like shelling
fava beans, which I’ve only done once in my life.
But Grandma was a smart
cookie. No gnarled coffee bean fingers for her. Grandma had technology: a coffee huller.
This is what Grandma used to hull coffee: an oversized mortar and pestle, on display to the left of the front door. Still, a good deal of exercise separating the coffee beans from the fruit. |
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More technology on display: a red coffee grinder under the lucky cat and a brown coffee grinder. |
A stained glass portrait of Grandma, done while she was in her 60s or 70s by a family friend. According to Amber who works in the store, this is how she looked in real life. |
Today, Grandma’s Coffee House is a Maui landmark, not far from the road to Haleakala Crater. It’s a
homey, unpretentious place: irregular wood slab dining tables, café chairs, the
lucky horseshoe over the entrance, the Japanese lucky cat facing customers,
newspaper clippings yellowed with age. You can buy more than organic coffee – there are
sandwiches ranging from $8-10, pastries, pasta salads, smoothies, breakfast
dishes during breakfast hours, lunch specials, other a la carte menu items from
the glass display cases, souvenir t-shirts, dinner on some nights, and even art.
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The interior of Grandma's Coffee House. |
Grandma’s coffee shop in Keokea, part of Kula, played a
historic role in the development of Maui’s art world. For decades, on Friday
mornings, artists and their friends would gather at Grandma’s Coffee around 8 am
to talk about art. My jewelry teacher JB Rea recalls heated discussions with
cheering and booing around the table.
The story goes that Dick
Nelson, who became a legend in the Maui art world, would have breakfast with
his students and critique their work. Word got around through the coconut
wireless (before internet), and artists like J.B. Rea, George Allan, Jill Christierson, and art lovers showed up to learn about art. Over time, the
critiques developed into animated art talks. The core group who breakfasted at
Grandma’s helped create Art Maui, an annual prestigious juried art show, and
the Hui No’eau Visual Arts Center in Makawao.
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Chickens and the tabby cat wait for table scraps. Like pieces from the BLT sandwich. |
There is an indoor and
outdoor seating area. If you’re lucky, and like cats, there is a tabby cat that
will attentively wait for morsels that fall while you’re eating.
Outside the
deck, wild black chickens cackle and sneak on the deck when people are not looking
to snag leftovers that the cat missed. There are picturesque views of the
distant slopes and ocean.
If
you are participating in the A to Z Challenge, please use either
Disqus or Facebook to comment below. Please include your link so that I can
visit you back, but it might be as late as May! (I'm still not sure I'm fully committed to this because of ahem, the "chicken terracing project," so if I can get through the first week... we'll see.)
Related posts: Art Maui Opening Reception
Visit more posts in the Archives.
Related posts: Art Maui Opening Reception
Visit more posts in the Archives.
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