Amber Road Cafe, Canton, MA

So a couple weeks ago, I had visited the Amber Road Cafe in Canton, MA. It is a coffee shop/brunch restaurant located around the downtown area, and is, interestingly, on the way to a Starbucks down the road. It's been around for about 4 years now.  I visited on a Sunday, circa noon-time. Usually they are open from 7:00 AM till 2:00 PM most days, sans Mondays. The crowd at the time looked primarily older adult, no one really looked like they were in college. Nevertheless, it was interesting going to check it out considering I must have passed it numerous times but never recognized it.
The time I went was super busy; I had to wait 10-15 minutes before I could be seated at the "bar" area (for lack of a better term). Once I got in, I immediately went to the bar area and ordered some coffee for there. I had noticed that they had some specialty drinks including something called "Tiramasu Iced Coffee", or something like that. They also had a breakfast and lunch menu with plenty of food.
However, I was more interested in just having the regular coffee, considering that I had been learning about coffee. No frills or anything, just coffee. They also have lattes, cappuccinos, and espresso, as well as a few specialty drinks as aforementioned. When I asked about its origins, they said it was Columbian coffee, and that they get the coffee from a supplier called "Raos", which, after doing some research later, is a single-origin coffee distributer that mainly ships around the Boston area but also some other general areas. No info on their site about fair-trade coffee...hmm...
At any rate, whilst consuming my coffee, I was met with a strong bitter taste in my mouth, that wasn't quelled until I put in numerous sugar packets into my coffee (I like my coffee sweetened). Perhaps I've been spoiled by the coffee present in my coffee class...I feel like I have slowly developed into a coffee snob, hahaha. Or maybe I just happened to have been stuck with a bad batch. Truthfully speaking, I don't know. It was fairly busy then and at least one person thought it was strange that I was taking a class about coffee. No lie! The atmosphere wasn't overwhelming, which was nice, though the overall busy-ness made it difficult for me to ask very much.

Here is a picture of the outside (image from hiddenboston.com)

 I was allowed to take pictures there, but considering how busy it was, and that I didn't bring a good camera (only my cell phone camera) I didn't get many good pics of the place.

But I will definitely try it again. I don't think I've made my mind up about this place! Maybe I'll try that Tiramasu coffee...stay for breakfast or lunch...I dunno. Fortunately for me, it is only a short drive from where I live, so geography isn't an issue.

For those who are interested, here is a map of its location:


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It's address is 635 Washington Street, Canton, MA, for the record. In addition,  the map above shows the path to the Starbucks down the road, for the sake of comparison.
-JP Burega

Uber Cafe! Mendon, MA

I did my coffee project at Uber Cafe located in Mendon, MA. For anyone interested in visiting this coffee shop the address is: 32 Hastings St #101 01756 (508) 488-6041 If you like a quiet place to grab some lunch and a coffee this is the place to go. Everytime I went to visit the shop it was near to empty but that might be because it does not have that much recognition yet. This June marks a year that it has been opened and it is also located at the end of a plaza mall, not to mention Dunkin Donuts is 400 feet down the street (walking distance.) However, the place is clean and it also offers outdoor seating. They offer an array of food choices as well as coffee flavors. They get their coffee from Red Barn Coffee. I would recommend this place to anyone! I found it to be very good and this place allowed me to grab a coffee and get some homework done!
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Sweets Coffee, Cakes and Treats By Andrew Gerety

Sweets Coffee, Cakes and Treats

 

 

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I visited Sweets for the first time on a Tuesday at about 11am it is a coffee shop and a bakery.  They have been open for only two years but they are located just down the street from a Dunkin Donuts.  Sweets is located at 56 Main Street in Kingston, MA.  When I went the shop was very quiet and there were only two other older men there.  The owner said they are busiest from about 7am to 9am and then again around lunch time. 

 Inside the shop is very small and there are only five tables to sit at.  They offer a wide variety of flavored coffees and espressos.  The staff is very friendly and welcoming of new customers.  The owner  told me how they make all the baked goods from scratch, offer gluten free items,  and they make lunch daily.  The day I was there she was making meat ball soup for lunch.  They have breakfast sandwiches and muffins to have with your coffee.  The price was comparable to chain coffee shops but the quality was superior.

The baked goods were really good I tried their cookies and a muffin.  The owner told me that they ground the coffee fresh everyday and they get their coffee from a local roaster.  Overall my visit to Sweets was a good one and I would recommend to anyone in the area to give them a try.  It is family owned and operated and a great place to get a coffee and to relax. 

 



                                                   

                                                                                     

 

Custom House Coffee of Middletown, RI by Bethany Matern

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On this map, Custom House Coffee is the lowest blue marker while the other two at the top mark the closest Dunkin Donuts locations. 

Outside View

Kathleen, Bob, & Delia

          Over spring break I visited Custom House Coffee located in a strip mall at 796 Aquidneck Ave. in Middletown, RI sandwiched between a pizza place and a clothing store. There are two Dunkin Donuts located a few miles away but when it comes to Custom House Coffee there is no comparison. I was able to get a full insider experience over the course of the day because my aunt is friends with the office manager, Kathleen who has worked there for 5 years. I went to work with Kathleen at 5:30 am on Tuesday and stayed with her until her shift was over at 12pm. I can honestly say that during the almost 7 hours that I spent there I had an absolute blast and I was never bored, not even for a second. Throughout the day I was able to meet the head roaster, Steve, the owner and general manager, Bob Mastin, and the on-shift barista, Delia, all of whom were very helpful and informative. Before the shop opened I was able to take a lot of pictures and I got some background information about the shop from Kathleen as she prepared for the day.

          Custom House is open from 6am to 6pm Monday through Friday, from 7am to

4pm on Saturday, and from 8am to 2 pm on Sunday. The shop was opened in May of 2002 by the owner and general manager, Bob Mastin, who also owns the strip mall in which the coffee shop resides. In 2006, Bob opened a secondary Custom House location in Portsmouth right off of West Main Rd. He later sold it as a franchise so he is no longer involved with the day to day of it but he still provides the coffee to them.

Bob makes sure that Custom House stays active within the local community by having a Martin Luther King Center Food Bank donation bin right by the counter, by donating day old pastries and 5 pounds of coffee a week to the children’s school breakfast program, supporting local artists by allowing them to display their photography in the shop and by saving all the coffee grounds to give to a landscaping business up the street for compost. He goes even further as to provide an incentive for customers to want to donate to the food bank by giving those who do a free coffee!

          Now speaking of the coffee, Custom House is not just a coffee house, it is also a coffee roaster and according to the head roaster, Steve, it is the only roaster left on Aquidneck Island. They order the coffee in green whole bean form from their two brokers Royal Coffee and Inter American Coffee and then it is roasted in one of their two roasters. The smaller roaster is located inside the shop almost as a decorative element and it is the roaster used to roast the organic coffees while the larger roaster roasts everything else. The large roaster is also referred to as the production roaster and is out back in their Roastery & Training Center in the strip mall behind the one Custom House is in, which Bob also owns.

  

          Since I was there so early I was able to go out back and watch Steve roast the coffee and talk to him about the roasting process. Steve was extremely knowledgeable and he seemed to enjoy having someone to tell and show things to about coffee. He said that they roast 6 out of 7 days a week and that roasted coffee should be given a few days before it is ground and brewed to drink and in his personal opinion he says 3 days after roasting is the “sweet spot”. Steve told me that he has been in coffee for 20 years and has been roasting for the last 7 years. He got into coffee as a college job and he started his own coffee business called Coffee Guy, selling coffee at local farmers markets. Another fun fact is that Steve even took a couple of business classes at Bridgewater State University!

          The shop offers 6 types of organic coffee and 14 types of non-organic coffee some of which are even Fair Trade. When asked about his stance on Fair Trade, Bob said that he believes in the sentiment of it and thinks farmers should be treated fairly but he has noticed that it does not hold up very well in practice since small farms cannot be certified for Fair Trade unless they are in a coffee cooperative. Their coffees originate from all over including Columbia, Guatemala, Ethiopia, Peru, Tanzania, Costa Rica and even Hawaii. Not all of the 20 coffees they sell are available brewed in the shop all the time, they just have their house blend, a mix of Columbian Supremo and Costa Rican coffees, in regular and decaf and then they pick a few other coffees to have brewed for the day. However, all of their coffees are available for purchase by half or whole pound bag in either whole bean or ground form for home use.

             When the shop opened at 6am it was kind of slow to start, a few customers trickled in over the first hour or so, mostly the regulars and by 7:30am it was starting to pick up but it still seemed to be mostly the regular crowd, most of whom were older gentlemen. When I asked the barista, Delia, how she likes working at Custom House she said, “Working here is like working at Cheers…everyone is always in a good mood and that is very important to a successful shop.” Custom House seems to have quite a following with the locals despite its lack of a drive through and because of that regular customers are greeted by name with a smile. Only one or two women came in to get coffee before 8am but around 8:30 a lot of women, mostly young to middle aged mothers who just dropped their kids off at school, started to show up for their morning buzz. During the day the customers seemed to get progressively younger in age from the older men in the early morning to the middle-aged women and eventually men of the middle to late morning to the young adults that strolled in around lunch time. From my observation, customers in the earlier part of the day carried out there coffee while later people would sit down to have coffee and maybe a bagel or pastry. The majority of customers either came in in small groups or pairs or they met up forming small groups, chatting in a familiar almost routine-like fashion while intermittently watching television. I noticed that there were people who came in alone and just got coffee to go but that there were some that got coffee and sat alone to read the paper or use the free wifi.

          The very friendly employees coupled with the interesting décor and home-like feel make Custom House Coffee a very happy and comforting place to be. There is a variety of seating options including tables and comfortable chairs in addition to bar-style seating and outdoor tables in nice weather. The white walls are accented by the teal trim and accents although it’s a wonder you can even see the white through the large collection of amusing coffee-themed sayings plaques lining the walls of the shop. Out on the counters there are numerous antique pieces of coffee equipment among other interesting tidbits of coffee information. One of the things I found most interesting about the décor was the ever-growing collection of antique coffee tins that sit on top of a ridge the lines the walls near the ceiling. I asked Bob about them and he said that he started out with just a few and then people started bringing them in when they found them at yard sales or flea markets and thus the bring-in-a-tin-for-a-pound-of-free-coffee policy was born. Also, on one of the walls next to the landing where some tables are located is a photography display put on by a local photography studio.

In addition to just plain hot or iced coffees, which are both very good, Custom House also offers a variety of specialty drinks including the Iced Coffee Addict and the Zombie killer both of which contain their special cold-brewed iced coffee that is absolutely amazing. Cold brewed iced coffee is extremely smooth and flavorful and also packs quite a punch seeing as it has the most caffeine possible due to the grounds soaking for 24 hours. The menu also includes numerous chai beverages and the classics like espressos and lattes.

Custom House also offers a variety of food options to go with your coffee. There is a large pastry case to choose from in addition to a variety of fresh bagels and breakfast sandwiches. In addition to breakfast foods the shop also serves various lunch foods such as chicken wings, soups, paninis and other sandwiches. When I was there I got to try hot coffee and the cold brewed iced coffee in addition to trying the chicken pesto panini for lunch which was absolutely delicious, I highly recommend it.

Overall I have to give Custom House a 10 out of 10 because it is just amazing. If you are ever in the neighborhood and even if you aren't, you should definitely give Custom House a try because I promise you won’t be sorry the trip would be worth it!

The Ultimate PERK (North Andover, MA)

Store Front, Photo Credit to Toni H.

If your ever traveling near North Andover make sure to stop by the Ultimate PERK located on 96 Main Street. There isn't much parking available however there is a large public lot right across the street where you pay usually only a quarter. 

When you walk into the shop it is very small and only offers 3-4 small tables to sit at but when it is nice out, the coffee shop puts out 5 more tables along the sidewalk to accommodate for more customers. When I walked in at around 12:00 pm on Friday, there were customers of all ages sitting down with their coffee and catching up on life. From retired men to college girls on spring break, everyone was sitting down to hangout and almost everyone that came in after me knew each other. For going at what the shop considered to be their "slow time" the place still seemed to be very busy.



The entire time I was at the shop business men and women came in and only ordered a coffee to go. This place is all about the coffee. They do have a selection of muffins and donuts however they are purchased from other stores such as the Ginger Bread Company which are exceptional.The Ultimate PERK also has a few breakfast sandwiches and a lunch menu during the week but the main focus here is on the coffee. I ordered a small hot coffee black and at the first sip, I understood why everyone raved about this place. Even with a Dunkin Donuts directly across the street there is no competition. The Ultimate Perk definitely has the better cup and for a cheaper price too!

Donuts and Muffins Provided

The menus located on the top of the wall gave the overall prices of everything including their food. The bottom menu attached to the counter though showed customers all of the different flavors available, along with extra signage promoting their lattes. The unique thing about their flavored coffee is that it is not full of sugar and artificial tastes. Here the coffee is brewed with the flavor shots allowing for a subtle and more enjoyable taste. This shop also offers soy milk with their coffee which made many people, including the gentleman sitting next to me, very happy. I tried asking my barista more about the coffee and where it came from but she had just started working there that month and was not informed about the history and production of the coffee shop. She was very friendly though and patiently waited for me to read the entire menu before deciding on my coffee.

Flavors available

Menus

Separate Coffee Pots for Each Flavor

Overall the Ultimate PERK is a great place to spend your free time. The atmosphere is always friendly and welcoming and the natural sunlight from all of the windows makes it more relaxing. This is definitely not your average coffee shop. Along with being served a great cup from friendly people, you can spend quality time with friends and family. This is a coffee shop that welcomes you to sit down and spend hours with others in a great atmosphere. Almost everyone knows each other making it a great place to be.

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Brittany Angiolillo 

Rainy Day at Mocha Java

Rainy Day at Mocha Java

I visited Mocha Java, a coffee shop that has been in business since 1995. This coffee shop is located at 3 Eastern Ave in Dedham, mass. I have never been here before but it was recommended from friends who had lived in the area. The atmosphere is very relaxed, clean, comfortable and warm.

Today is a rainy Friday afternoon around 12pm and there is steady business with a few customers lounging. The baristas are very friendly, talking to customers along with customers sitting and doing work, talking with friends and relaxing. The type of customers seem to be mid thirties to fifties, men and women equally. This might have to do with the time of day though, as a high school is right near by but kids are in class now so it might be busier once they get out for the day. As a few customers are seated, most others are just getting their drinks to go, which seems they might be on a lunch break.

The shop has a pretty good variety of coffees, including signature lattes. These include caramel, butternut crunch, love potion, junior minty mocha and other unique flavors.

The barista was very friendly and mentioned that this Dedham centers’ original “coffee shop” and that recently they were able to put outdoor seating out front. The shop really seems to pride itself on connecting and being apart of the community as well as bringing everyone together through their business. The barista said that he had been working here for only about a year but the business has been around for almost 15 years. He mentioned that the mornings can be busy but people tend to mostly order the plain coffee drinks, and then later in the afternoon more lattes and cappuccinos are sold. 

Java House in South Boston

Java House

I have always been told that South Boston was made up of Bars, churches and coffee shops. And that statement still stands true today (though I think the coffee has changed a little).

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On East Broadway in South Boston you could find at least three coffee shops while walking down the street. But Java House is the one you should actually stop at. Though its appearance has you questioning its taste once you try the coffee you’ll remember the saying ‘never judge a book by it’s cover’.

Java House has been around since 1989. Though it does not have the traditional local coffee shop feel you still feel its connection to the town. Even though it has no seating inside or out you likely to linger. The employees are friendly and the costumers are even more so. Staring a conversation with a total stranger is a cliché in a coffee shop but at Java you’ll leave questioning how you have never met that person before. The regulars come from a wide variety of people. With school, churches, and a courthouse surrounding the area you are sure to meet an eclectic bunch.

Where Dunkin Donuts gets it wrong.  Java does it SO right.  The flavors are there, but not overpowering.  The coffee tastes fresh, not like it is sitting in a tub for days on end. The iced Coffee selection is vast and each flavor is ordered from a different company to guarantee the best taste of each flavor.