Photograph by Jacqueline Ramseyer
Famous Name: Employee Danielle Winkelman serves coffee drinks and goodies at Coffee Cantata in the Dry Creek Plaza.
WG's Coffee Cantata borrows name from famous Bach tune
By Jim Aquino
Opened in 1996, Coffee Cantata, at 1702 Meridian Ave., may be the only coffee shop in San Jose that shares its name with a Johann Sebastian Bach tune.
Dennis and Roberta Chinn, the husband-and-wife owners of the Willow Glen coffeehouse, say they borrowed the Coffee Cantata name from a favorite San Francisco bistro/coffeehouse that they used to frequent as teenagers. This earlier Coffee Cantata was located at Union Street.
"When we decided to open our place, we chose the name Coffee Cantata for sentimental reasons. The one at Union Street was no longer in business," Roberta says. "What's really surprising is that a lot of people came in and asked if we were the same [business]."
Also known as Cantata No. 211, the opera that inspired both businesses was composed by Bach in the 1730s and is a satirical piece about Herr Schlendrian and his promise to find a husband for his daughter Lieschen if she vows to give up coffee. (The libretto, which was penned by Christian Friedrich Henrici, a.k.a. Picander, as well as a sound clip of the cantata, can be found at http://www.afactor.net/kitchen/coffee/kaffeeKantate.html)
The opera was written at a time when coffee was pretty new to Germany (even though it had been introduced to Europeans a century before Bach's birth), and coffeehouses were turning into favorite hangouts for authors, composers and artists. The Coffee Cantata was a change-of-pace composition for Bach, who was usually identified with more somber works.
"Bach primarily wrote religious music," says Dennis, who adds that Bach's cantatas were often about Biblical stories. "This Coffee Cantata was a secular work, more oriented toward contemporary on life at the time."
At the Chinns' coffee shop, customers with a Lieschen-style addiction to java can choose from such coffees as mochas, lattes, espressos and cappuccinos.
"We serve five different coffees every day. We carry about 50 varieties of beans in-house," Dennis says. "There's quite a demand for lattes and mochas."
The Chinns are considering adding lunchtime food to their shop, even though business during lunch tends to be slow. Coffee Cantata also features fine art by rotating artists.
Dennis' previous day job was as a district sales manager at a local analytical instruments company. As for Roberta, she was finishing her studies at San José State University before she and her husband started Coffee Cantata six years ago. Dennis says he ventured into the coffeehouse business because he wanted to get out of the rat race.
As in other local coffeehouses, businessmen, politicians and other professionals use Coffee Cantata for meetings or to finish some work. Roberta says that since Coffee Cantata's first day of business, she has been noticing that a lot of customers bring their laptops and stay for hours.
"We have a lot of regulars from the neighborhood," Roberta says. "We pride ourselves in being the neighborhood meeting place."
Coffee Cantata, 1702 Meridian Ave. Open Monday-Thursday 6 a.m.-7 p.m., Friday 6 a.m.-9 p.m., Saturday 7 a.m.-9 p.m. and Sunday 7 a.m.-5 p.m. For more information, call 408.445.2224.
Willow Glen, California Since 1992
