The card beside the cup

Text: an original contemporary café-review-style practice extract.

The café served its smoked tea with a card that began, ‘Do not expect this to be comforting.’ It predicted a taste of burnt wood, then advised leaving the cup untouched for a minute so that a softer, sweeter flavour could emerge. Before I had lifted it, the drink had already been turned into an argument.

My first sip did not match the card. I found damp leaves rather than a fireplace, and the promised sweetness was nowhere obvious. Yet the instruction to wait stopped me from dismissing the tea at once. As it cooled, the sharpness thinned and a dry, fruity taste appeared. I enjoyed proving part of the description wrong almost as much as I enjoyed discovering what it had been trying, rather clumsily, to name.

Across the table, Sam had refused to read the card and abandoned the drink after one sip. That does not prove the note improved the tea: perhaps it merely persuaded me to work harder at liking it. Explanations can plant expectations that the experience then struggles to escape. Even so, this one left enough space for contradiction. Its real usefulness lay in extending my patience, while my disagreement with its language remained part of the pleasure.

In this extract, the writer tries to show that being told what to expect can add to, rather than spoil, the enjoyment of an experience.

Evaluate how successfully this is achieved. Support your views with detailed reference to the extract.