By its very nature, the act of eating is paradoxical. On the one hand, it is the most mundane of actions, essential for the nourishment of the body and the satiation of hunger. But beyond the need for sustenance, eating is a highly ritualized action in pursuit of pleasure. In this context, the mundane becomes transformed into the art of dining, as taste, quality and stylization become significant factors determining when, how and what we eat. Eating then becomes an "elaborate performance of gender, social class and self identity" so much so that every group manifests "signs of cultural membership through the manners attached to food." (Finkelstein,"Dining Out," 201-203.)⁷

Coffee became a part of European eating/drinking rituals in the mid 17th century when coffee, tea and chocolate, as well as sugar and tobacco, became available to European society. In the process, it became an everyday consumable invested "with such peculiar symbolic weight, [and] such compelling intensity, that soon enough [its] absence from daily life would become virtually unimaginable." (Mintz,"The Changing Role of Food," 264.)⁸