We’re always looking for new places to stop for coffee during the kid’s morning nap – about two hours after she gets up in the morning, she’ll usually sleep for an hour and a half or two if you stick her in her stroller and walk her around for a while. This weekend, we tried two new places. Saturday morning we went to Locolat Cafe at 18th and Florida NW. I guess this is considered Adams Morgan, but I’m not entirely sure. We had brunch – the wife tried the savory waffles, which were great, and I had a turkey and cheese on croissant, which was also very good. The coffee was good, if expensive. And because they forgot to charge us for an item and had to run the credit card twice, they gave us a little chocolate-covered meringue. As an aside, it is almost always good business to give away something small when you’ve inconvenienced your customer. It was barely an inconvenience at all, but when the cashier (I believe she’s actually the manager and wife of the chef) says, in effect, “I messed up, let me make it up to you”, I will be back. Sunday, we went to Cafe 1612. We were planning to go to Love Cafe, but they don’t open until ten, and the kid needed her nap before that. 1612 was good, but it shares a building (but not any walls, apparently) with a gym. It’s a little strange to eat brunch while watching the girl fold towels at the counter. But the service was good, the food was good, and the coffee was not only good but reasonably priced. The music there was a little funny – it was an oldies station that didn’t really fit the decor of the place. We’ve now got quite a list of places to go and get coffee. Heller’s is probably my favorite because of their egg and cheese bagels, but it’s always nice to have variety.
Tag: coffee
No one can stay away
I went back to Starbucks this morning, despite my claims to the contrary. I had gone the other day just to break a $20 and found that the grande coffee was back below $2.00. This morning, I just couldn’t bear the thought of the awful office coffee (black, because the only thing worse than bad coffee is powdered creamer). And they weren’t busy, so I asked the guy who served me about the price change.
He very nicely explained what happened, and it’s actually an interesting explanation. Starbucks did, in fact, raise prices back in July. That pushed the price over $2. But then Virginia changed the tax laws. They stopped taxing plain coffee. They still tax the coffee-like milkshakes, and they tax the food that Starbucks serves. According to the guy, they will even tax your coffee if you get it with a pastry or something. I think the distinction is between “coffee” and “food”, and coffee is considered to be part of the “food” category if you drink it with something to eat.
Anyway, very interesting.
Starbucks is fired
It’s bad enough that Starbucks coffee tastes burnt. I could get around that by ordering, on my wife’s recommendation, the mild instead of the regular. And I can get by the milkshakes passed off as coffee by just making fun of the people who order them (A good general rule – if it takes more than 5 words to order your coffee, not including “please” and “thank you”, you’re drinking a milkshake). I even got past the first price increase that sent the largest coffee over $2 when you include tax. But now the medium coffee is $2.02, less than six months after the last price increase.
I’m done. No more Starbucks coffee. Tomorrow I’ll bring in a coffee mug and start drinking free work coffee.
On an unrelated note, I’m testing out a WordPress tag plugin. I don’t really know what it does, but this is the first post that has tags on it. Maybe nothing will be visible to you. Anyway, we’ll see.
Stupid federal holiday
I’m at work today, despite the fact that it’s Presidents’ Day. Or is it President’s Day? A day for all the Presidents? Or a day for the office of President? I don’t know. But all you should know that, if “Presidents’ Day” is wrong, it means I got the the name wrong. It’s not a grammatical error.
In any event, the point is that no one is here. More importantly, Caribou Coffee is not opening until 8AM. That’s 15 minutes from now. I know it opens at 8AM because I just walked down there in the cold to find them closed. I’m so mad I briefly considered not going back after 8. That’s how mad I am.