The Beauty of Blenz

Allow me to share the story of my most amusing lover yet. He won me over through hot chocolate.

I was eighteen and stupid, naive to love but ambitious by all measures. Thus I found myself working at my most interesting internship at the time, commuting hours each day for a line on a resume and a pay cheque to fund my university Honours program. In short, I was there for world domination, and by God it would be fuelled through hot chocolate. Conveniently, there was a café very near the entrance to my office. It was a Blenz café, a location of a chain, and I found their food selection quite satisfactory for my short lunch break in between my corporate haggling. Thus, I was a frequent customer, and their hot chocolate was, honestly, agreeable.

What I appreciate about Blenz is that their hot chocolate is made from real chocolate pieces, none of this nonsense about chocolate syrup. My order was a small dark hot chocolate. The chocolate flavour - rich and sweet, even for the dark - made itself evident as the baristas did not shy away from inflating the chocolate-to-milk ratio. Granted, as I would find out later, my hot chocolate was being made by a boy desperate to kiss me, but my experience with Blenz hot chocolate was exceptional, particularly as it is a chain café - I am highly cynical when it comes to chain hot chocolate recipes.

Let us turn back time to a rainy day, months before my internship. Due to the errands of the day, I found myself watching my university calculus lecture in this Blenz coffee shop. I was the sole customer, and this soon-to-be noteworthy boy was the sole barista. As the doors swung upon, we locked eyes, and he leaned on the counter and said hello. Charming and handsome, this dear barista was, but once I had my lunch in hand, my mind replaced all memories of him with integration and differentiation of single variable functions. Months passed, and I was now a certified holder of Newton's mathematical knowledge. I found myself on the doorstep of this café once again, having begun my internship and my inevitable rise to corporate power. 

"Small dark hot chocolate, please," I said. I tipped and turned away.

Then I noticed the barista - the barista - and he noticed me, too. He handed me my hot chocolate. Apparently, he's a clever barista, too, for, on the lid, inscribed in caramel syrup, was a heart. I smiled and left and naturally returned the next day. 

"Small dark hot chocolate, please, with caramel," I said to him the next day. He looked at me. I looked at him. The charade began once more. 

To my great sadness, he was not working the day after that. I could not pervert our ritual. I asked the working barista for a London Fog. I returned a week later. The handsome barista was there! My romantic fantasies of him had gone too long unrealized. I was ambitious in life; I could be ambitious with men. I walked right to the counter and, instead of asking for hot chocolate, I asked for his number.

So began a torrid little love affair - utterly ridiculous and foolish, an intense passion rollercoastering its way through three weeks, littered with the idiocy of two eighteen-year-olds with new found money and freedom. I don't even know if we liked each other after the first date, but we saw each other again and again and again. The details are far too embarrassing to share, even anonymously. For months after, I was reeling; now it is thankfully hilarious to me and all my friends, and I leave the barista as a vignette in my memory, one that is as disturbing as it is amusing. 

In short, I will never go to that Blenz location again.

I would go back for the hot chocolate. Throughout those weeks, the barista gifted me copious amounts of free hot chocolates. I instructed him on how to customize it just to my liking: small, dark hot chocolate, with an added pinch of cinnamon. To have lived with free hot chocolate, even just briefly…I do not know if I shall ever live so happily again.

Blenz hot chocolate comes in different types of chocolate, and generally, all are acceptable. Each hot chocolate that I have had has been homogenous in texture and elegant in taste. The quality of the milk steaming depends on the barista who serves you; find one who is in love with you, and it is sure to be better.

For its generous allowance of chocolate in each cup, I shall grant Blenz admittance into Heaven.

As for the barista, however - if he is in Heaven, I think it may be happier for me to reside in Hell.