Serious Gourmet Shit
We started The Reverse Orangutan in 2018 with $1,000 and a dream to bring unique and exceptional coffees to our neighborhood and beyond. Our business reflects our passion for great flavor, sustainable ingredients, and supporting local business. All of that to say that our business is a scrappy operation focused on delivering some Serious Gourmet Shit.
“Excellence is an art won by training and habituation. We do not act rightly because we have virtue or excellence, but we rather have those because we have acted rightly. We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act but a habit.”
The Reverse Orangutan
We know, we know. It’s unusual. Its not a yoga pose or anything…. weird. Our name is an homage to a chess game Tartakower versus Maróczy, in the New York 1924 chess tournament on March 21, 1924. The name "Orangutan Opening" originates from that game: the players visited the Bronx Zoo the previous day, where Tartakower consulted an orangutan named Susan, and she somehow indicated, Tartakower insisted, that he should open with b4. Also, Tartakower noted that the climbing movement of the pawn to b5 reminded him of the orangutan. In that particular game, Tartakower came out of the opening with a decent position, but the game was drawn. Alekhine, who played in the tournament and wrote a book on it, said that 1.b4 was an old move, and that the problem is that it reveals White's intentions, before White knows what Black's intentions are. The Reverse Orangutan is the counter to the Orangutan Opening, life has already made it’s move, its all about how we respond.