Cafe Serendipity
Click right to take a look around…
Driving up, I was convinced that I’d made a terrible mistake. In a strip mall with three other businesses, the facade was defined by a digital board displaying several lotto jackpots and a modest, horizontal banner displaying the name in a mixture of Gothic and Burgues along with the phone number, Eat-In, Take-Out and a DELI that snuck it’s way in at a diagonal. My expectations plummeted. Then, leaving the sun-reflecting sidewalk, I entered a cool, two-salon expanse. Ahead was a counter—a convenience store type—to the left some self-serve coffee and a boutique, primarily of necklaces displayed on velvet busts and earrings angled upright and fastened to camel-colored cardboard pieces. While a drink may not interest you, the display cooler is worth a second look. The top paneling is faux, stained glass—striated dusk blue and accented with coppery petals and pistils. It could have just as easily said Coca-Cola or Cold Drinks. This replacement is intentional; I’m sure of it—the efforts of a first time homemaker, with no design experience, trying with heart to create a beautiful space. Oh, it’s even more apparent in the second salon where the seating lives. A fireplace with Nutcrackers on the shelf and rocking chairs (that appear to have been shaped from a tree’s likeness) and coffee inspirational art gone meta with four sets of four frames within frames occupy the outskirts of the space along with a surprising number of yellow flowers, artificial sunflowers and orchids—the latter of which stem out of a huge terracotta painted hydria. After a bit of personal deciphering, the mason jars on each table, paired with clear stands, were perfectly elegant candle lamps. And, the pulleys, hanging on the room’s dividing wall and unexplainably laying on the counter next to the ice cream cups, I’m sure will never make an ounce of sense. For when “Movie Theater Size Boxes of Candy” for $2.99 sneaks into the bottom line of the laminated ice cream menu, it needn’t. I think of every contraband Milk Dud, M&M, Snowcap, and Skittle I ever ate in a movie theater, and the thought is the cafemaker’s final design that inexpertly yet dotingly situates.
SCROLL DOWN
SCROLL DOWN
For More
〰️
For More 〰️
Drink: Small Coffee
Cup of absolutely no frills goodness—you won’t spit it out, and you won’t regret it. If you’re looking for something more complex, this coffee is not right for you. If you are looking for a lifeline—and an ice cream, breakfast sandwich, or a plastic-wrapped snack to enliven further—then the solo brew on a Bunn-O-Matic and the two milks in the adjacent mini fridge will do right by you.