I’ll admit it: I don’t get all these different coffee flavors.

Banana syrup. Brown sugar cinnamon. Pumpkin spice.

Butter.

That last one requires a little explanation. I spent most of my life believing butter belonged on toast, which you could eat with your coffee. Apparently, some people decided we could save a step.

I’ve been drinking Folgers black for decades. No cream. No sugar. No flavor pump. My coffee order is usually complete before anyone has a chance to ask a follow-up question.

“Coffee, please.”

“Room for cream?”

“No, thank you.”

And there we are. Everybody can get on with their day.

Meanwhile, somewhere along the way, coffee became a dessert menu.

I see drinks that sound delicious, but I’m not always sure where the coffee fits in. Banana bread. Cinnamon rolls. Pumpkin pie. Those are perfectly respectable things to have next to a cup of coffee. I just hadn’t realized they were applying to become the coffee.

To be fair, I’m not claiming my way is better. Drinking the same thing for decades doesn’t make me a coffee expert. It makes me someone who knows exactly where the Folgers is in the grocery store.

There’s something comforting about that familiar cup. I know what it will taste like. I know how I like it. And when I’m getting ready for work or settling in to prepare an audiobook, I don’t have to make another decision before I’ve had my coffee.

But I am curious.

Maybe brown sugar cinnamon is the thing that would finally make me understand. Maybe a little vanilla would be a reasonable place to start. Maybe banana syrup tastes much better in coffee than it sounds to someone who has spent decades keeping fruit out of his mug.

I’m willing to consider the possibility that I’ve been missing something.

I’m just going to need a recommendation more specific than “You have to try everything.” Have you seen those menus? I could finish narrating another book before I worked my way through one.

So here’s my question:

If you could recommend one drink to convince a lifelong black-coffee drinker, what would it be?

Give me the actual order—the size, the flavor, hot or iced, whatever I need to say so I don’t stand at the counter looking like a man who wandered in to ask for directions.

You can make your case in the comments.

For now, I’ll be over here with my Folgers.

Black.

Until somebody presents a convincing argument for the banana.