Martha Stewart's Worst Coffee Experience Isn't One You're Likely To Share

It's hard to imagine a culinary problem that domestic genius Martha Stewart wouldn't be able to solve. From elevating the flavor of bland chicken pot pie to using clarified butter to take scrambled eggs to the next level, Stewart always has new tricks up her sleeve. A few years ago, however, she ran into a culinary problem she couldn't figure out how to fix: the terrible coffee offered in prison while she was serving out her sentence for conspiracy and obstruction of justice related to insider trading. 

The homemaking media mogul spent five months behind bars and has since offered many criticisms of her accommodations (as well as compliments to the women she met while she was serving time). In "Martha," a 2024 Netflix documentary, Stewart shared her thoughts on the cups of joe she tried to enjoy while incarcerated — among other topics — through entries from her diary that she kept as she fulfilled her sentence. At one point in the documentary, she reported, "We had the worst coffee imaginable." We're sure she was relieved when she returned home to her normal breakfast routine of a cappuccino alongside a green juice.

While the coffee was downright awful, it wasn't the only not-great thing that came out of the kitchen while Martha Stewart served her time. She also talked about the discomfort she experienced in her cell. In "Martha," one blurb from Stewart's diary features the lifestyle icon saying, "My room contains an old double-decker bedstead, and metal frame. The springs are very saggy and thus an unhealthy bed set. I would actually prefer the top." Much to her dismay, inmates who are over 62 years old are automatically given the lower bunk (Stewart was 63 years old when she ended her sentence in 2005).

Stewart also talked about other concerning standards she experienced in prison, stating, "What worries me is the very poor quality of the food and the unavailability of fresh anything, as there are many starches and many carbs, many fat foods." In an interview with David Letterman, Stewart talked about how she learned to go without. "Five months without good food is a problem for almost anybody," she said. Fellow inmates said that Stewart did what she could to let others in prison take advantage of her unique skill set — she figured out how to bake apples in her cell's microwave, and even made a caramel flan to bring to the potluck the community held to celebrate the end of her sentence.