Cola Adventures

This weekend, Bridget and I decided to go for a walk into Chinatown. After stopping at Nasa foods for some Indian supplies, we hit up the Kowloon market for some crazy Asian drinks. While B decided to play it safe with a delicious-looking fruit drink, I decided to be a bit more experimental. Hawthorn Berry sounded good to me. I mean, it's a berry, right? And, to the best of my knowledge, berries are delicious, so I gave it a go.

Well, it turns out that Hawthorn berries are anything but delicious. After the first sip, I knew I had made a very big mistake. It tasted a bit like... well, I can't really adequately describe how bad this drink tasted. Imagine barbecue sauce that expired five years ago with flowers ground into it. And the aftertaste! You really don't get struck by the full awfulness of the experience until several seconds later. And the taste just won't go away, no matter how much of B's drink you steal trying to wash it out of your mouth.

I think I had maybe five sips before I abandoned all hope of finishing it, and I desperately needed to find something else to cleanse my palette. Still with the vile taste in my mouth, we went in to the India Grocery on the corner of Somerset and Bronson. And there, I struck gold.

The Golden Kola, that is! I actually found a place that sells Inca Kola, the national soft drink of Peru! My jaw literally hit the floor. I drank quite a lot of it while I was in Lima, because this stuff is absolutely delicious! It's a yellowish drink, slightly less carbonated than the usual soft drinks we get here, and it tastes a bit like bubblegum (for lack of a better comparison). Peru is also one of only two countries in which Coke is outsold by another soft drink company, and I definitely know why. I had no idea that you could get it anywhere else, but it turns out that Coke has a deal with Inca Kola for distribution in the United States, which I presume is where this one came from. I don't know whether it was actually made in Peru or in New Jersey somewhere, but no matter, it tasted exactly the same as I remember it. So if you ever find yourself on the corner of Bronson and Somerset, pop in to the India Grocery and give it a go. I think I'm going to be making many return visits to Chinatown as a result of this newfound discovery.