On the Pumpkin Spice Latte: does a vegetable belong inside coffee?

Picture taken when I still had my innocence

I can only hope you believe me when I say I’ve wanted to write about the pumpkin spice latte for weeks now. I’m not just jumping on the bandwagon because hating on or gushing over the “PSL” is the trend of the century; I have felt strongly about the presence of this debatably tasty vegetable inside my favorite beverage for far too long now. My friends listen sincerely to my outrage and my family sympathizes when they hear about my struggle and disbelief. Here, I offer you evidence of my feelings in print.

A belief that is now part of my identity

But I only hated the player, not the game. So I hopped to the nearest Starbucks, determined to ingest this latte and write many words about it. By bus and on foot last Saturday, I reached the café, tasted the latte and registered my feelings. Alas, the prospect of a failing midterm exam caught up with me and I couldn’t vent last week. But I was back at the café today, another beautiful fall day that I decided to ruin with this so-called coffee. I called it “making a sacrifice for one’s art” (with one’s parent’s credit card).

I walked in, and the smell of drifting cinnamon hit me with the force of a pumpkin. I should mention here that in my opinion, cinnamon is no-good, very-bad. It reminds me of French toast, which I dislike because I dislike eggs.

I walked up to the barista and requested a short pumpkin spice latte. As per her job requirements, this lady mispronounced and misheard my name. She said to me, “Okay, I got D, and then what?” when I said “Divya.” A charming lady. I asked her how many people purchase pumpkin spice lattes in a day and she said “Oh I don’t know. Quite a bit,” to which I said, “Okay, thanks.” One could guess from our exchange that she was chatty.

When the fated beverage came, I grabbed my notebook, three sachets of sugar and stepped out of the cinnamon-pecan-maple cave.

Like I said, I’ve tasted this before. But I needed a fresh jolt of the drink to write about it — and that was about the only thing fresh about all this. The pumpkin spice latte tasted every bit the heap of slightly burnt cardboard shavings that it did last Saturday. I do not kid; the beverage tasted like what I imagined the paper cup holding it would taste like if it was chopped up, liquidized and doused in egregious amounts of cinnamon and half-hearted pumpkin syrup. Maybe it was a problem with the cup, which I have never heard of before. Nevertheless, my tongue lost any memory of what a pumpkin tasted like and I promptly forgot what self-respect felt like.

A girl came all the way to Starbucks to order a plastic cup of water with ice and a straw — so just water — and I still think I made more questionable choices in life.

I have come to understand that it is fall and naturally people want to dump entire pumpkins on their heads. They want to wear sweaters with slouchy sleeves that stretch out to twice the arm’s length. They want their fingers to poke out and close around cups holding anything that tastes like crunchy leaves and chilly winds. But I wish they would refrain from committing unspeakable acts upon a noble beverage. I wish for people to understand that vegetables do not belong inside coffee or next to coffee grounds. If I was coffee, I would bully the shit out of any such invader. That’s what this crummy pumpkin is like inside coffee — a downright disgrace to decoction.

I respect pumpkin as an ingredient when it doesn’t have the balls to overstep its limits. But pumpkin as an ingredient gets degraded the more visible it becomes in every-day objects — there is now a pumpkin-spice deodorant. There is apparently a section of the human population that wants to smell like a spiced vegetable. Does anybody other than a vegetable want to smell like one? I don’t know. I struggle with these questions daily. I can’t trust what I used to know anymore.

I pray that the coffee-drinking population realizes that a pumpkin spice latte is a step in the wrong direction for humanity. I pray that people realize they can make delicious pumpkin soup, if they wish for hot spicy liquids with the taste of pumpkin. I wish for a future and world where my children can proudly announce, with no ugly consequences, that pumpkin has no business near coffee.

But for the time being, I wish for my money back.