I learned how to brew coffee from my ancestors, but I learned how to properly add cinnamon to my coffee from "mi Abuela," my adopted Salvadorian grandmother whose extraordinary life story I've touched on briefly before.

By all measures, Salvadorian coffee, or the way Salvadorians brew their coffee, is not nearly as intense as Vietnamese coffee. Vietnamese coffee is meant for slow sipping and lingering while contemplating the existential human tragedy, and thus the extra thick and bitter flavor of the drink we produce pairs well with its intended ethos.

Salvadorians use coffee as sort of an au jus to dunk their sweet breads in. "Pan con cafe," a generic catch-all phrase for "bread with coffee", is Abuela's favorite breakfast. This is why Salvadorian coffee is quite mild, pleasant, and non-intimidating, when compared to its Vietnamese counterpart.

When I first tasted Abuela's coffee, I was actually surprised at how pleasant it made me feel. Look, I'm Vietnamese. We're the people who figured out how to add an egg to coffee and gave the world a new addiction. It's difficult to impress a Vietnamese when it comes to coffee.

What is Abuela's secret? Cinnamon. No, not sprinkling cinnamon on top of already brewed coffee, like how American coffee shops train you to do. The secret is mixing the cinnamon in with the coffee ground before it's brewed. That tiny adjustment in the order of execution made all the difference. 

There is something so inherently optimistic about the taste of the coffee when it's brewed this way. If Vietnamese phin coffee is Wednesday Addams, then Salvadorian cinnamon coffee is Enid Sinclair, and together they are each other's Yin and Yang.

Ever since I learned this life-changing trick from Abuela, combined with my innate knowledge of "phin" brewing (a life skill all Vietnamese inherit since birth), my daily coffee savoring time has never been the same. And perhaps, that was what I needed after all: the Enid to my Wednesday.