I’m in Minneapolis for the week, so I thought I’d do a different coffee review for each day that I’m here!
Seeing as I make a living with my notably subtle title as a Coffee Specialist, and I start every morning with at least one coffee, I’d like to think that I have some credentials for this delicious undertaking 🙂
This first coffee I tried the day after I flew in was from a place called Dunn Brothers Coffee, which is located by the Spoon-bridge and Cherry sculpture amidst other fancy sculptures and quaint gardens.
If you ever get the chance to visit Minnesota, I highly recommend trying to take some photos with this massive cherry. I got some where it looks as though 1) I’m trying to eat it; and 2) I’m managing to lift up the mammoth-sized spoon that this giant berry rests upon.
The atmosphere of the cafe here was overall pleasant. It was spacious with only a handful of people, all of whom were quite kind about any and all questions that I had. It was a little louder than I would have liked, but there were comfy chairs with lovely views of the lake beyond as well as other nooks and crannies within which one could hide away from the bustling to do some written work in peace. There were some impressive looking vintage machines, numerous paintings of coffee brew bubbles up-close, and at least two dozen different espresso roasts for sale from regions all along the coffee “Bean Belt.”
I was recommended the caramel banana specialty Nirvana drink to try, and it did not disappoint. I found it to be a hot, steamy, and creamy concoction that surprisingly both smelled and tasted exactly as one might expect a banana to be (albeit more along the lines of the artificial flavoring we’ve produced in our rendition of bananas rather than how they actually present themselves to be in nature). It seemed more along the lines of a medium-to-dark roast. It had a very faint hint of caramel, but it wasn’t quite there as I’d expected it to be (the banana must have overpowered it). In any case, it was honestly quite needed and appreciated on a long day of walking around to see the sights. My intuition would rank this as a 7 out of 10 (which got bumped up to even an 8 or a 9 when it cooled a bit over time) and I would definitely get this again. We’ll see whether I end up having the time and means to do so before I leave next week.
As I continue to review coffees, I may come up with more of a coherent and stable ranking system with various dimensional criteria, including notes or flavor profiles, roast intensity, aesthetic, or more. For now, it will be a little chaotic, just like life 🙂 If you’re interested, I hope you’ll follow along as I continue writing about the caffeinated drinks I try in this nice and surprisingly pleasant people-free city.
P.S.
Slight detour: The first coffee I tried on what was technically my first day in Minneapolis was actually in Newark before my connecting flight. It was a butter pecan latte from World Bean, which I described tiredly yet gratefully in a tweet as: “smooth, creamy, warm, comforting, overpriced, underrated, yet does not taste like a butter pecan tart; worth trying at least once.”
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