Dear Kombucha,
I’d like to address the elephant in the room.
Yes, you, the 6-dollar effervescent beverage whose probiotic prowess makes you the go to treat for health enthusiasts everywhere. I see you on the first row of sparkling beverages, below the kefir and the $10 almond milk. Your label is sparkling, glimmering, but I am weary of your glass bottle and the Pandora’s box of health food craze that I will let out if I uncap your bottle: gluten free carrots, bone broth, acai berry infused with lavender essence and probiotic minerals, a combination of fantastically imagined organic foods that are almost Dr. Seussian. Well, if Dr. Seuss was a health conscious millenial.
You almost had me fooled with the pretty packaging. Then I purchased your sad 5 dollar self, strawberry flavor. Your label was promising, but your taste puzzling, more like something you should dip bread in at an Italian restaurant than something you should consume for a refreshing treat. In other words, you taste like vinegar and you’re bitter to the core.
I’ve tried to get away from you, but you have infiltrated yourself into the mainstream and no longer remain shackled to the refrigerated beverage section of Whole Foods. You’re a sell out: Target has you now.
While you may have joined the ranks of the rich, the powerful, the corporate elite, I’ve seen you at those quaint and overpriced kombucha bars stationed at the latest gentrified Los Angeles neighborhood.
You are everywhere and hard to avoid
The thing is, I want to like you, I really do. I have visions of myself quenching my thirst with your kin, a liquid assortment of rainbow colors too pretty to pass up.
But the thing is, I don’t want to have to chew my beverages. While your host mother “SCOBY” may have birthed you, she left her remnants everywhere. And to be completely honest, I’m not too fond of gelatinous substances floating in my drinks. You’re not quite boba and you’re not certainly not an aloe vera drink, but you’re equally disgusting and probably warrant a choking hazard on your label.
You may be of questionable origins, but you’re unabashedly you. I like you at a distance, the same way I like cats and graphing polynomial functions.
And while I revile your bitter taste, like a great aunt, your absence makes my heart grow fonder.
Then I see you again and consume you, and I think to myself “shoulda just had a Coke.”
Or maybe a V-8.
Sincerely,
Ella