I personally think that Vanilla Coke is the sweetest invention since Cinnabon cinnamon rolls and A&W's Cream Soda. This version of the familiar sweet dark carbonated cola is accentuated with a dash of vanilla flavoring; a tall glass of this stuff swirling around in ice cubes is guaranteed to put a satisfied smile on anyone's face, especially on a hot summer's day. However, at the time of this writing, Malaysian shores have not yet had the pleasure of savoring this new wonderfully concocted drink by America's giant soft drink company.

Vanilla Coke was first introduced in the USA just less than a year ago on May 8, 2002, and 16 years since Coca-Cola promoted their last new product, diet Coca Cola with lemon. I graduated and left the USA in summer of 2001, so I missed out on the commercialization of Vanilla Coke. My best friend from college, Linda, had written to me that one time shortly after the release of Vanilla Coke and could not stop raving to me about how much she loved it. She drank as much of the stuff as she did water, in fact! How lucky she was that Vanilla Coke was readily accessible in plastic bottles for immediate consumption.

So why do I miss Vanilla Coke even though I was not around in the US during the release of the product? Well, before Vanilla Coke was ever produced and sold officially by the Coca Cola company, one diner in my college town of Athens, Ohio was already enticing Coca Cola lovers with their own homemade Vanilla Coke. The diner was called Dalt's Diner but in my second year in university, they changed their name to Court Street Diner (CSD). But "Dalt's" was a name that my friends and I preferred to call it.

Dalt Diner's

Dalt's was your typical American diner that looked like a cool trailer home from the outside and was tastefully decorated with American memorabilia on the inside. Almost every week starting from my sophomore year in 1998, Linda and I would dine at Dalt's and order our favorite things from its incredible menu. I'd always get a plate of linguini stir-fry, a type of pasta stir-fried in some sort of teriyaki-and-garlic based sauce with generous chunks of chicken meat and fresh-green crisp broccoli flowers. As my side dish I'd also get a grilled tuna sandwich and French fries as big as fingers!

Linda and I always ordered this combination ("2 stir-fry linguinis and 1 tuna grill!") when we were Dalt-Dining, and for drinks we'd order plain water because 1) water was cheaper and suited our student budget, and 2) we'd plan to have dessert after our meal (imagine that!), so we wanted to prepare our sweet taste buds for that. But of course by the time dessert time came, we'd be so stuffed that the exit door started to look smaller than when we first entered it. So we would mournfully bail out on ordering that large piece of ice cream cake wedged with loads of Oreo bits. Darn.

"Vanilla Coke, please!"

One night we were having dinner with our housemate Noreen. After taking down our food orders, the waitress asked us what we wanted to drink; Noreen replied "Vanilla Coke, please." I looked at Noreen with deep intrigue. When the waitress was gone, I asked Noreen what Vanilla Coke was, to which she responded and said that the drink was exactly just that: Coca Cola that tasted like vanilla.

How interesting! I've had vanilla ice cream with Coke before but not quite with just vanilla essence. We sat at a table that was near the counter where our drinks were being made and I managed lean over to take a peek at the waitress who was now filling up a tall glass with ordinary Coca Cola. She then went to this large metal dispenser and squirted a few generous amounts of some colorless liquid, the vanilla flavoring I presumed.

Miss Waitress came back with our drinks (cheap and boring ol' iced water with a piece of lemon for me). Noreen let me take a sip of her drink. Rockets shot from my ears as the lovely sweetness of the Vanilla Coke traveled and seeped through my body.

Guess who was frantically waving her hand to order Vanilla Coke before the food could even arrive!

(Later on, I also learned that Dalt's made its own version of Cherry Coke: original Coca Cola with floating chewy crushed cherries! Yum!)

Let's try and make Vanilla Coke!

After the Vanilla Coke experience at Dalt's Diner, I had attempted of course to make it at home, so while grocery shopping at Kroger's one evening, we bought a small bottle of cooking vanilla essence and a big bottle of Coke. Feeling rather clever with ourselves, we confidently started adding in some of this essence into our Cokes. We then took a sip and gargled the homemade concoction around in our mouths, almost like we were wine-tasting or worse, like gargling Listerine.

For a minute we wanted to believe that we had successfully imitated Dalt's Vanilla Coke. But finally we decided to be honest with ourselves and raised our white flag: our mission was a disappointment. While our mixture tasted slightly vanilla-ish, it was also somewhat bitter. I blame it on the choice of vanilla essence or maybe even too much of it. Cooking vanilla essence is dark; the vanilla essence I saw being used at Dalt's was, as I remember it, colorless. I'll never know for sure what we did wrong. Perhaps something more were needed to perfectly pull the recipe off, like cooking the vanilla essence with a little bit of sugar first or something.

I guess it didn't matter that we couldn't make Vanilla Coke at home. We took joy in visiting Dalt's to have our Vanilla Cokes that accompanied our great food. Plus the company and environment there was wonderful.

That was of course until I realized that after almost two years of not having the Vanilla Coke, I started to crave for it again quite recently. Yet I chickened out on trying to make it again...! The bitter memory of my attempt to make homemade Vanilla Coke with my friends back in the US was just too traumatic. And I missed Dalt's very much.

Finally just last week, I got my very first commercial bottle of Vanilla Coke from a place I never dreamed of getting it from: South Africa.

Jon Goes to South Africa

"So do you want anything from the States before I head out to your part of the world?" asks my friend Jon Loeb in his email to me before he left his residence of Palo Alto, California, for a 2-week vacation and tour of the world. Apart from comedian Margaret Cho's Notorious C.H.O. DVD and some magnets from Stanford University, I couldn't think of anything else I wanted.

Then the idea of asking Jon for Vanilla Coke started slipping into my head. At first I was a bit apprehensive of asking Jon to bring this in for me, perhaps because my request just sounded so trivial. But to me it made perfect sense; I can't get Vanilla Coke here in Malaysia!

I finally told Jon to get me two small bottles of Vanilla Coke (see, I was considerate of his luggage weight and refrained from asking for a whole crateful), which he didn't seem to mind bringing. But he told me he would try and get them from "Jo'berg" (Johannesburg in South Africa) where he was planning to do some trekking and sight-seeing at Kruger National Park with his father before he headed out to visit me in Malaysia. Jon didn't want to carry those bottles with him from America while he did his travel in Africa.

Hmm, South Africa? I was a bit hesitant that he'd find Vanilla Coke in South Africa, seeing that the product had not even penetrated the Asian market. But Jon seemed to know what he was doing so I said, "Yeah sure, if you can find Vanilla Coke in Jo'burg dude, by all means. If you can't, it really isn't a big deal."

A South African fridge magnet depicting two Ndebele women

Jon gets to South Africa and has a ball of a time learning about the people, environment and culture there. He learned that Caucasians living in the region were originally from Holland but it had been 400 years since their ancestors landed there, so white people in South Africa refer to themselves as Afrikaners and no longer Dutch. Although the practice of apartheid had been abolished over a decade ago, some racial tensions and unrest still occur on and off between black and white people. Needless to say Jon exercised a lot of caution while not forgetting to have fun when traveling from one place to another in South Africa.

(I would tell you about the time two fornicating baboons landed on the hood of Jon's jeep while he was riding through Kruger National Park with his father and friend, but that's another story altogether. We're here to shed light on Jon's Vanilla Coke story.)

So, while Jon was doing his South Africa thing, he didn't forget that I collected postcards and magnets, so he got me a few. He also kept an eye out for Vanilla Coke, which apparently didn't seem to exist anywhere except in the local McDonald's where you could only order them in paper cups. Frustrated and determined to keep his promise, Jon went to every shop he saw that sold bottled drinks to find Vanilla Coke, and always during these times he would face defeat.

It appeared that South Africa did not sell Vanilla Coke.

"You must sell them to me now!"

Finally Jon visited his last South African shop on his last day there, decided to try his luck and asked the shop owner, for just one last time, whether Vanilla Coke was available. Of course the reply Jon got was, like always, "No, we don't sell Vanilla Coke."

Jon starts to walk out from the store when suddenly Geoff, his father's friend and travel guide who was outside the store, started yelling for him. Jon runs out to see what Geoff wanted, and Geoff told him that a Coke truck had just pulled in. The truck was apparently transporting replenished inventory for the store and a few men were starting to unpack crates of what looked like, you guessed it, bottles of Vanilla Coke!

Not believing his eyes, Jon approached the men and asked them what was inside the crates. Sure enough, the bottles of Vanilla Coke were exposed and twinkled seductively in the hot African sun like gold! Jon's eyes, in response, widened and shone like stars. Apparently this was the very FIRST shipment of Vanilla Coke to ever be sold in South Africa and Jon had just stumbled upon it like a hoard of treasure!

Jon dashes back to the store and asked the South African shop owner if he could buy some Vanilla Coke for the second time. Exasperated, the shop owner clearly thought Jon had lost his mind, so the man once again said that his store didn't carry Vanilla Coke. "A' hah! You're wrong! I just saw a truck pull in with crates of Vanilla Coke in the back! You have them so you must sell them to me now!" cried Jon excitedly.

Jon victoriously showing off the Vanilla Coke that he so vigorously sought after in South Africa!

The shop owner peered out the store window and sure enough, men were now pushing in trolleys of the precious drinks into the store. Jon hurriedly paid for two small bottles and grabbed them as though they were going to run away. He packed them up and arrived in Malaysia, scaring me into believing that he didn't manage to find them. Of course I was ecstatic when I found them in the goodie bag Jon had prepared for me, right next to my Margaret Cho DVD! I laughed when he told me the story of how he managed to find them at the very last minute. He said the very thought of wanting to please me must have brought him good luck.

Who knew Jon Loeb would be the first American to buy the very first bottle of commercially available Vanilla Coke in the African continent for a cute Malaysian friend? Hehe.

Special thanks to Jonathan Loeb for making this article possible!