Finally, the post you’ve all been waiting for! (But seriously, you knew I was going to blog about coffee at some point, right?)
Back in Arizona, I used to spend my Saturdays at Giant Coffee, where the glass doors allowed the entire storefront to open up on nice days. In addition to the amazing space, they had excellent coffee — some of the best I’ve ever had.
Another place, close to ASU, that served excellent, ground-for-you, one-cup-at-a-time coffee was Royal at the Market. In my last weeks in Phoenix, I frequented these almost exclusively, thanks to spending extensive time with Mark Ng, who refuses to drink the Starbucks stuff except as a last resort.
So when I came to DC, I figured that one of the first orders of business was to find a cute little boutique coffee shop that would become my new home. Well, as it turns out, District-of-Columbians aren’t that picky about their coffee. There’s Starbucks, Caribou and Saxby’s, and a then a few one-off stores that get rave reviews on Yelp solely for NOT being a chain.
On Sunday, I walked from Logan Circle to Columbia Heights and ducked into the U-Street Cafe to get an iced latte. The coffee was so bad I had to throw it away half-full. After I got to Columbia Heights and did my shopping, I hit Tynan Coffee, which…tasted just like Starbucks. The next day, I tried Flying Fish, which was a little better and ground the beans for me, but still lacked the strong, velvety flavor of Giant’s brew.
And today, I had a massive caffeine headache (despite not drinking coffee daily for weeks).
I’ve been told that Filter, in Dupont, is worth trying. Perhaps in the next blog…