Boulder Coffee Shops blog

This reviewer is still in Michigan so if you’re tired of hearing about coffee shops outside of the Boulder area, sorry, but at least for me it’s interesting to observe the contrasts across the country.  It’s especially interesting to see what locals get in small cities in the rural U.S. (I’m thinking population 1,000 – 10,000 and nowhere near a metro area).  These are towns far too small to have a Starbucks, and maybe even too small to have a decent espresso operation, but as I said in a previous post, indie espresso joints are on the rise throughout the heartland.

One such city is Munising in the Upper Peninsula, population a bit under 3,000 but a spry little tourist town that’s home to Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore.  Visiting a couple of weeks ago, we badly needed decent coffee and ended up finding the only real coffee shop in town: the Falling Rock Cafe & Bookstore.  Now this was a real locals joint.  I don’t know how a town of fewer than 3,000 people has enough dedicated cafe regulars to have 300 earmarked mugs on the walls, each with a different customer’s name, but they do.  Maybe our beloved Walnut Brewery has more personal beer steins on its walls than Falling Rock has coffee mugs, but it can’t be by much.  It was nice to see a local coffee shop with such a dedicated following.

Unfortunately, at least in terms of the actual coffee, the good citizens of Munising aren’t given much love in return.  The coffee was disgusting.  I went back twice in a day, both times didn’t drink my drink.  This isn’t snobbery, this is plain, objective fact, confirmed by the multiple adults in our group (only one or two of which are coffee snobs) who tried the coffee.  The first visit we got coffees for 6 people and all were more or less undrinkable.  The second time, different shift, only two coffees and both were bad.  The baristas were friendly but completely untrained.  So maybe it was the baristas, or maybe it was the roast: Great Lakes Coffee.  My guess is that it was both.  Even with a woeful barista the quality of the coffee will still peek through.  Not in this case.  I’m still wondering where the good roasters are outside of Chicago.

The espresso experience was unfortunate, because otherwise Falling Rock is exactly the kind of shop I’d like to have in Boulder.  Physically it is half coffee bar and cafe and half bookstore, both with a good, comfortable feel.  Plenty of tables and chairs in both spaces and a cozy couch in the bookstore.  The cafe portion has a good menu of food options (we didn’t try anything though) with what is absolutely bedrock standard in midwest cafes: ice cream.  Saxy’s can have its gleaming euro stainless steel gelato cooler, but Falling Rock has the standard salt o’ the earth ice cream cooler.  As far as a cafe and bookstore combo, don’t we have that in the Boulder Bookstore?  No, not really.  There we have a huge bookstore attached by a single opening to a very uncomfortable coffee shop (probably Boulder’s most uncomfortable coffee shop).  In Falling Rock the scene is comfortable and mellow, with easy, natural movement between the cafe and bookstore.  At Falling Rock they are built to be together; at Boulder Bookstore the cafe seems like a bastard stepchild appendage.