Sunday, August 17, 2008

Somewhere between Store-Bought Bagels and Prosciutto on Ciabatta Lies My Brand Loyalty

I had the chance to make my first dives into two new coffee places this week, and relative to the java and fare that I can get elsewhere, I found them somewhat lacking.
  • Edgehill Studios Cafe in Edgehill Village markets itself as "music row's favorite cafe." It has a good open layout with lots of table space and free wi-fi for surfing and keyboarding. Parking is an adventure at crowded hours. I dropped in to pick up some breakfast between 10:00 and 10:30 only to discover that they had stopped serving breakfast. But wait. This is music row, right? The musicians I've known here are not farmers; they stay up and sleep late, so how can "music row's favorite cafe stop serving breakfast bagels before 10:30? Anyway, I settled for just a bagel and cream cheese, and I was given what looked like a small store-bought bagel and a tiny tin of cream cheese not packed on site. The third strike was that the cafe couldn't make my breve because they were all out of half-and-half. A coffee joint out of half-and-half? That's a gastronomic foul in my book, even with so many drinkers watering (literally) their javas down with skim milk. I bet they keep the hazelnut flavored syrup overstocked. The espresso fell a little flat for me. All of those early-rising musicians can have their favorite Edgehill Studio Cafe.

  • Drinkhaus (in Germantown) opened with a lot of hyper-local fanfare here, and so I was looking forward to my first walk to a coffee shop this morning. I'll confess my bias right off and admit that I'm rooting for a neighborhood place in this walkable community to succeed. The place is small-to-cozy but bright and clean. Its size restricts it to a shop either to get coffee and linger at non-peak hours or to get coffee on the go. I was fortunate on both accounts this morning, but Drinkhaus seems to have the potential to feel claustrophobic if a half dozen patrons hit it at once.

    The espresso is fair trade, which made buying my double 8 oz. breve a pleasure this morning. What let me down is that even after I called the drink by name the barista asked me what kind of milk I wanted in it. Doh! And she asked me size I wanted. Double-doh! Once I got the drink things got better and it was a fair trade for me as I paid about 35 cents less for it than at other establishments. That average-guy solace was offset by a menu that looks a lot like the aristocratic neighborhood that Germantown is fast becoming: prosciutto with honey and pear on ciabatta (did I spell the Italian correctly?), and no bagels.

    The tipping policy is not exactly worker-friendly, either. Even in our check-card-based culture, there is no place for the tip ticket. Customers have to leave cash, which means that customers who tend not to carry cash don't tip even though they may want to. There's really no excuse for not providing a tip line on the bill for the sake of convenience. It ain't right that Starbucks omits a tip line, and it ain't right that Drinkhaus does likewise.

    In the final analysis, I will be going back and supporting Drinkhaus, because the concept of fair trade coffee with good flavor in the walkable community is an appealing one. But they haven't yet impressed me enough to pull me away from regular excursions to Crema (my personal favorite, which had attempted to locate in Germantown before Drinkhaus only to be stopped by the neighborhood association's failure to vote to allow commercial development in the same mixed-use building) or to alter my pit stops at Fido or J&J's on the way to work.



CORRECTION: John Horton points out in the comments that it was the Summer Street Lofts homeowners association (not HGI) that was vested with approving commercial use.

1 comment:

  1. You state that Crema was stopped by the neighborhood association's failure to vote to allow commercial development in the same mixed-use building. HGN has no say over residential v. commercials uses once a project is built . You probably mean that the Summer Street Owners Association failed to vote to allow it. This is a condo development and their Bylaws affect the uses of spaces in the condo development.

    John Horton

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