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Starbucks loves to ruin its very good, dark-roasted brewed coffee with expensive, goofy and ill-advised add-ons.
Head-scratchers like the Iced Sugar Cookie Almond Milk Latte make you forget it’s supposed to be a coffee drink.
Now, Starbucks’ mad scientists have really hit rock bottom, rolling out the Oleato line of olive oil-infused java and oat milk concoctions.
If you balk at paying $7.50 for a cold Pumpkin Spice Latte that’s mainly sugar and ice, wait till you get a whiff — if you can detect anything out of the ordinary at all — of the Oleato Golden Foam Cold Brew, going for about the same price here in New York.
The supposed brainchild of company founder Howard Schultz, Oleato promises an “alchemy of Starbucks arabica coffee and premium Partanna extra virgin olive oil” to create “an entirely new experience, taking on a depth and dimension that simply must be tasted to be believed.”
Believe this: Oleato is just another gimmick of the kind every fast-food conglomerate needs twice a year to get media attention, like Shake Shack’s recent black truffle-oil assault on burgers.
Nobody loves olive oil as much as I do.
I enjoy it on pizza, salads, tomatoes and seafood. Properly applied, EVOO is a miracle substance. Olive oil-poaching turns even the driest cut of halibut into a masterpiece of moisture and flavor.
But I hesitated to give Oleato a whirl. Some early tasters claimed on social media, as later reported on CNN and other major media, that the stuff caused stomach issues.
After a trial run in Milan, Italy’s most Starbucks-friendly city, Oleato is now available in the United States, but only at the chain’s upmarket Reserve and Roastery locations.
In a fit of reckless adventure, I decided to subject myself to three varieties of the new line at the big Starbucks Reserve store in the Empire State Building.
I’m happy to report I suffered none of the reported tummy troubles — despite drinking all three of them. But two tasted horrible enough to deeply offend my senses.
Oleato Iced Shaken Espresso and Oleato Golden Foam Cold Brew turned perfectly good coffee into catastrophe. The alleged spoonful of Partanna in each tasted less like olive oil than chemical solvent with a nasty, lingering aftertaste.
I gulped down orange juice to wash away the eerie amalgam of joe, Italian olive oil and oat milk. Only a hot Oleato Latte was borderline consumable, perhaps because the heat boiled away the oil that no more belongs in coffee than it does in a bowl of Kellogg’s Froot Loops.
I’m glad I felt fine after sampling these abominations. But they’re bad enough without making you search for a public bathroom in the middle of Manhattan.
Stick with Starbucks’ plain old Grande drip to save your taste buds — and pennies.
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