Elements of a good cafe

At this present moment I am sitting in a quaint little coffee shop called Grendel’s café at the intersection of NE 8^th Ave. and East Burnside in Portland Oregon. The weather is brisk out with the sky gray and moist in patches but the Sun managing to shine through the patchwork, reflecting off of the black wet asphalt of the street ahead. It’s 9 in the morning and bleary eyed men with thick stubbles and grayblack hoodies walk through the pale yellow wooden door of this café to have their cup of the house blend or the French press. Portland seems to coffee shops everywhere. While walking through the streets for about a mile yesterday I counted at least 15. This speaks well of the city to me since one of the prime indicators of how interesting a region is is how seriously it takes its coffee shops. In fact I wouldn’t be surprised if there exists a correlation between the intellectual output of a region and the existence of places where people from different walks of life can get together, relax over a cup of beverage, and talk about different things. Bars do not qualify because there is nothing relaxed about them and often they are too loud to have any conversations more interesting than the cringeworthy mating ritual. Despite what they are made out to be I feel that bars in the modern society are engines of isolation whereas places like coffee shops bring people together. Moreover, a communal place is very much defined by the kind of people who visit it and bars, by their very nature, attract a certain demographic which tends to be more shallow and superficial than interesting. It’s a generalization which probably fails every now and then but it’s definitely more true than it is false.

Good coffee shops, therefore, must attract the right sort of crowd as well. This means that it’s always hard to find good coffee shops in financial centers like downtowns. I apologize if I appear to mean that people working in such fields as finance and marketing are not interesting, but it’s the truth isn’t it? Posh looking coffee shops with sharp dark interiors and high glass windows looking on to 5^th avenues and Broadways which charge 5 dollars for their cappuccinos to jetsetting managers in black suits and shiny leather shoes must not be worth any reasonable man’s time. Similarly a café trying too hard to be alternative and on the edge just ends up inviting the wrong kind of clientele - the kind which is always on the lookout for the new, the hip, and the happening. A good café is, therefore, almost always to be found in a semi-urban kind of setting where it can generate a consistent following among the locals. Most people who visit it see it as a part of their daily lives. They know the baristas by name and have consistent orders. Most don’t see it as just a place to get coffee but as a place to sit and perhaps read a book or have a little chat with people whom they have come to know there. A good café is an extension of home and work for many of its patrons and it achieves this by providing a warm and cozy environment, a safe temporary little haven from the rush and bustle of the world outside. The good-natured charm of a nice café is infectious and just like most simple things in life it is often a matter of the stars lining up right for it. What it is not exclusively about is the quality of its coffee. That is almost secondary to what goes into making a great café! So here are the ones that I like in San Diego (in no particular order):

Lazy Hummingbird in Ocean Beach, Pannikin in La Jolla, LeStats in Normal Heights and University Heights, Mystic Mocha, Art of Espresso in UCSD, Peet’s in La Jolla and Hillcrest, Bird Rock coffee roasters, and above all, the most awesome Bassam café near my place.