Back for More Coffee.

Skip back to last weekend. If you can go back that far. It's cold, it's windy, the leaves are all over the ground, brown, dried up and very crunchy under your sneakers. We are back in Minneapolis. We are attending yet another wedding. (very delicious butter cream cake- each table got their own- nifty!). The wedding was held at The Minnesota Science Museum, all guests got free admission to exhibits- also nifty!


Spending yet another weeekend neglecting the cat and the piles of dirty clothes. The house is cold; the socks are just not long and thick enough. Winter is really close by. All I can hope for is more coffee. Thankfully, we are in the land of 10 000 coffee shops. I am trying to hit them all. R is really on top of her hometown geography. This trip, we travel on familiar coffee paths as well as down some shaky unpaved roads. The necessity to infuse our bloodstream with lots of caffeine makes the morning hunt for coffee an adventure as well as a requirement.

We hit about 4 cafes this time around. Betsy's Back Porch. Decent coffee with fity cent refills, lots and lots of space to spread out and interesting autumnal decorations. the plastic leaves, the wreaths, the scarecrows. (well you can kind get a sense of what kind of happening place this is from their website...) It is 4 short blocks from the house, ok?! Just to highlight the unique coffee culture of Minne - there is a Starbucks right across the street and it's monstrous parasitical nature didn't drive Betsy out of town.


scroll down a few days and we go back to some old favorites. Bob's Java Hut. Cool servers; not too cool to actually give good service and look good doing it. great match-books, strong Americanos, like we like it. Coffee shop is also a local gathering spot for bikers and their fans.




Next up, Anodyne. Great name. No idea what it means. Something about relieving pain.
They understand coffee. The place is packed. It's Sunday morning, the brunch crowd has taken over. strollers, couples, old folks. We go up to get some coffee and a scone- the best we've had in a while- dates and nuts, real buttermilk. (correction: we thought the scone was at Betsy's, but Ruby corrected me). I have never seen a woman (the barista) so miserable, so utterly bothered and in pain (from her late night jaunts?). and the tip jar looked quite empty from where I was standing. Here's a little tip for you sour lady: If you are not a people person, if you are bothered when asked to hand people empty cups with which to fill their self-serve coffee, pissed off when a customer asks you to reach into the jar to pull out a biscotti with a little piece of wax paper or just generally put off by the whole service part of the service industry, maybe, honey, you need to get yourself to a career counselor. But to be fair, they have a fabulous mural painted on the outside wall and some great interior design. I'll show you....


So maybe the coffee anodyne is really an attempt to heal the customers of their painful service experience. Now I get it.