Mrs. Samuel Pepys's coffee-making skills

Beverages Interestingly, a search through Pepys's diaries doesn't provide much of a mention of Mrs. Pepys's skills in that particular department. Pepys did however spend an inordinate amount of time in coffee houses, which as the annotation page to the republication of the diaries indicates through quotes and other miscellanea, weren't unlike the coffee chains of today in terms of there importance within social circles:

"The coffee house must not be dismissed with a cursory mention. It might indeed at that time have been not improperly called a most important political institution. No Parliament had sat for years. The municipal council of the City had ceased to speak the sense of the citizens. Public meetings, harangues, resolutions, and the rest of the modern machinery of agitation had not yet come into fashion. Nothing resembling the modern newspaper existed. In such circumstances the coffee houses were the chief organs through which the public opinion of the metropolis vented itself."

As has been noticed lately, Starbucks and the like are now being used increasingly for job interviews, because they provide a relaxed atmosphere which presumably means you're able to open up more and give a better accord of yourself, assuming you don't spill latte down your front.