Rinaz the accidental coffee genius

Bon Jour! Salut! I had zee most lovely time last Thursday night, being with friends over coffee. What better way to spend zee time together? Oui?

I was initially surprised to receive the invitation by EastWestPR but after hearing the Carte Noire commercial on 938live for some weeks, curiosity got the better of me and I decided to attend the event along with my friends, Mintea, Chillycraps and NTT who were all coffee lovers themselves.

I just realised at how multi-racial this picture is

Thus, last Thursday, I attended the Carte Noir press event at the beautiful Old School building at Mount Sophia. Carte Noir is a leading coffee brand in France. Which explains why I’m wearing a beret – for that French feel :-P

Old School is such a beautiful place. I could not help but to admire how charming it looked with its bold black lines over white washes. If NTT had not mentioned that the place used to be the Methodist Girl’s School, I really could not have guessed it. Now it houses many Art and Design institution. I should really come here again to see the place in more detail.

At the registration counter we saw Aaron as well as Sabrina and after registering, we headed inside where I saw Chillycraps and Mintea already sitting down on a bench which seemed rather curious to me. Why sit there, when there are proper tables and chairs to sit on?

Chillycraps : Thats because we are at a school and we should sit on a bench like students!

In any case, the Managing Director of Kraft Foods, officially started the event with a short speech and the fashion show featuring the Paris-trained Cambodian designer, Romyda Keth started.

It was a little hard for me to see the fashion show though, with the guests and the photographers standing up, taking pictures of the models that we could not get a clear view. Regardless, looking at her dress collections from the website is beautiful, elegant and most definitely wearable.

After the fashion show, each of us were given a cup of Carte Noire coffee for a taste test. Personally for me, I thought that the taste was very light, almost airy like. I preferred my coffee strong but I can imagine how this coffee will be very popular with the masses because of the light taste.

Mr Paris Arnold, the Managing Director for Kraft joins us for a chat session, where he seems genuinely interested in knowing more about us bloggers. I think that companies are starting to open up to bloggers which I think is great as it is a direct way of getting feedback from the very people who consume their products.

Sabrina started asking Paris, why a fashion show for a coffee launch. And with enthusiasm he replied :

“The French embodies style and sophistication and a fashion show brings that to our coffee to reflect that especially with a Paris trained designer”

Ah!

Later on, we proceeded to enter a room where we saw our favourite barista! Danny Pang! Danny was there to do a demonstration on how to create coffee as well as how to make coffee art. He makes it look so easy to make that perfect blend of coffee and with his extremely sexy, manly voice, I could just go on to listening to him for hours!

Later on we went to our seats to have our own go at creating coffee art. At first it was quite daunting as I’ve never done anything like this before and I had the feeling that my coffee art is going to turn out bad.

But I gave it a try anyways and swirled the milk foam and it turns out that the outcome wasn’t bad – it was quite decent actually considering that it was my first time. Maybe I’m a coffee genius without knowing it! :-P

Its not perfect but its not bad right? This makes me want to learn more about coffee :-)

Here is a short video on the coffee demonstration :

Making Coffee Art from rinaz on Vimeo

We had so much fun talking about coffee that before we knew it, it was already 8pm! A whole hour after the event has ended. Time really does goes by really quickly when one is having fun :-)

And at the end of the day, we were given a door gift consisting of Carte Noire Coffee as well as their beautiful gold trimmed cup and saucer for us to continue enjoying a cup of coffee-love :-)

Do you drink coffee? How do you like your coffee?

Related links :

• Carte Noire Press Release
• Romyda Keth collections
• Danny Pang’s blog entry
• Chillycrap’s blog entry
• Mintea’s blog entry

Sidenote : While on the topic, I won a Coffee Card thanks to Nicole’s contest! I couldn’t possibly drink 11 cuppas so let me know if you want to go to Geek Terminal with me :-)