Jantar chique, vinho caro e café de cocô

What does “café civeta” mean in Portuguese?

Café civeta is Portuguese for one of the world’s most expensive coffees, better known as kopi luwak. A civeta — a cat-like mammal also called gato-de-algália — eats ripe coffee cherries, and the beans are harvested from its droppings, picking up a smoother, less bitter flavour on the way through. So “best coffee in the world” and “comes out of an animal’s behind” are, surprisingly, the same drink.

When the waiter calls it o melhor café do mundo, the diner asks how it’s made — and the deadpan answer lands the joke: “tem um bicho que caga os grãos de café” (there’s a critter that poops out the coffee beans). The luxury pitch collapses into cocô, which is why the clip is titled café de cocô. The animal word civeta comes from French civette, ultimately from Arabic zabad; in Indonesian, kopi luwak literally means “civet coffee.”