After completing the first part of the To Do List at Mission coffee, I was excited to try some of the other shops in the area. Coffee is one of my favorite drinks, but I rarely ever get it from specialty or artisan shops simply because there are none near where I live in Cleveland and I usually prefer to just make my own at home. This assignment provided me with a reason to expand my experience with coffee and visit Impero, One Line, Kafe Kerouac, and Boston Stoker.
One Line
One Line was the first coffee shop that I visited for this portion f he Columbus To Do List, however this was not the first time I had been there. Last time I went, I got one of their pour over coffees and did not love it, so this time I decided to get a cappuccino. The drink was delicious and the atmosphere of the shop was nice, with some standing desks and sitting areas in the back, however there was not a lot of room. This would be a good place to come and meet someone, but because the space is somewhat limited, doing homework there would probably not work well. Overall, I would recommend this shop to a friend, however I would not recommend their pour over unless you like strange flavors in coffee.
Boston Stoker
One of my favorite things about this shop was that, in addition to having different beans, they also had a selection of ways to have the coffee prepared. I decided to take advantage of this and have one of their coffees made in a french press, which I thought was very cool. Unfortunately, however, the coffee was not great. During my visits to all of the coffee shops, I noticed that there seemed to be a trend of having very strange flavors in the drinks. When looking at the descriptions of all of the different beans they have, the flavors would be something like, “blackberry with smoke” and that simply does not sound appealing to me. While this shop did not specify the flavors, it did taste similar to some of the other shops that had very exotic, and in my opinion bad, coffee. Other than this, the shop had a lot of room to sit and desks to work at and I would recommend it to a friend mainly because they have smoothies as well, which is something many coffee shops do not serve.
Impero
The first thing that I noticed when walking into this shop was that it was very small. There did not seem to be a lot of room to sit around or study, but this was more than made up for by the fact that they seemed to serve normal coffee. They had a selection of frozen drinks, some food, and most importantly coffee that did not, “have hints of chocolate and rose.” I had been trying to get the drip or pour over coffee at the places I went because that tends to have a more distinct flavor from shop to shop, and this one was the best of them all because it was just simple, normal coffee. Out of all of the shops that I visited, this is the one I would most recommend for someone who actually wanted coffee.
Kafe Kerouac
Out of all of the coffee shops, Kafe Kerouac had a different feeling than the rest. The others, for the most part, felt like they were there for you to come in and get coffee, then leave. There was usually room for a few people to it and maybe for one or two to do work, but that was about it. This shop felt much more like they wanted you to come in and stay for the whole day because of the numerous books, board games, and even the fact that they have poetry readings. Unfortunately, it is pretty far away from my dorm and I am not a big fan of poetry, but for someone who was closer, it would be a very nice place to come and hang out. Another downside that I noticed was that their coffee seemed to have the strange taste that I noticed in most of the other specialty shops, so I would not get it again. Even though the coffee was not great, I would still recommend this shop to a friend because of the great atmosphere and abundant desk space.