Wednesday, October 04, 2006

Coffee for the Guys

photography by christopher gilbert

10/4/2006

Written By: Chantelle

For Gilkatho Pty Ltd.
An Australian Coffee Co.

How do you take your morning coffee? A dash of milk? A cup of sugar? Maybe even a bit of Irish crème? I bet you’ve never taken it with legs before though… It comes from Chile, and it’s called café con piernas. It essentially means ‘coffee with legs’. Basically a café con piernas is a stand-up coffee bar staffed entirely by stunning, barely-dressed women. Amazingly, despite what you may be thinking, some of the best coffee in Chile can, in fact, be found with a side of legs. Whilst Paris may house the Moulin Rouge, and the US may claim home to the notorious Hooters, the sexy café con piernas appear to be of a purely Chilean phenomenon. However, these sexy Chilean coffee shops possess some surprisingly different characteristics to their foreign counterparts which are scattered across the globe. For example, rule number one for these cafés is no nights, no weekends. Business in these coffee shops is run strictly from 9a.m. until 9p.m. every weekday, only. According to locals the busiest hours are generally in the morning. No real shock factor there, as many customers come in to drink their first coffee of the day…or five…or six… Even more differentiating and stunning is that there is no alcohol. These really are just normal coffee shops, in which every person who serves you just so happens to be absolutely gorgeous and very scantily-clad. Additionally, there’s no cover, no doorman and cheap coffee. Who would have thought that there would be anywhere in the world you could see such a view without burning a lovely deep hole in your change pocket. Likewise, the drinks would cost multiple times more than the affordable 700-900 peso coffees (US $1.50) found in these cafés. So, if you’re looking for a sexy coffee at a cheap price, or if you’re just looking for your husband who left for his morning coffee days ago, Santiago is the place to go!