We found the quiet shop you’ve been looking for
And it was right downtown the whole time. It’s been there for about a year now. Ku Cha House of Tea is on 13th between Pearl and Spruce and get this — IT DOESN’T HAVE WIRELESS!!! Ok, some might consider this sacrilegious in Boulder, but I know many of you are going to consider it a godsend antidote to the laptop libraries sprouting up all over town in otherwise fine shops such as Folsom St., The Cup and Saxy’s.
Ku Cha is a combo retail tea shop — selling around a hundred different loose-leaf teas and steepware — and a ‘traditional’ tea house with a sublimely relaxing atmosphere. No laptops in sight, just a soothing lounge where you can write in your little notebook, read the newspaper, or just stare at the ceiling without being bombarded by the obnoxiously loud noise music of the Goat. The quiet, laptop-free atmosphere also means the Ku Cha is generally empty. Good for people seeking refuge, bad for the shop. Helpfully they are doing well enough to stay in business because Boulder certainly needs some quiet spots, especially since the demise of Tea Spot.
Winot coffee, brought to you by….
Accidentally ran into Winot Coffee this morning, located in beautiful downtown Niwot (get it? no really, do you?). Turns out Winot is Folsom Street Coffee Co.’s (our link) satellite location, also serving Salt Lake Roasting Company (how much did you guys pay to get roasting.com??) coffee. The shop looks good. Nice and small, probably a decent place to work during the week. The coffee is ok. We’ve said a few times that we’ve never had a spectacular coffee at Folsom St., and truth be known, it’s often one of our go-to shops for work sessions so we’ve had a lot of their coffee, but we still like the shop. Don’t want to project too much, but the same probably goes for Winot. Had a decent cup, not awesome, but pretty good, and worth going back to.
Another shop on the blocks
The venerable Tea Spot has a sign up on the cash register announcing their demise. Sad. The location is a bit awkward. You’d think the ice rink plaza would get more foot traffic but it’s just enough out of the way to be relatively unvisited. The Tea Spot sign says that the owners are doing well in their wholesaling business so that’s where they’ll focus their efforts from here forward, the end of the lease being a good time for them to pull away from the retail shop. New owners could jump in on favorable lease terms (seems like business leases are going ridiculously cheap in Boulder right now) and an already-completed buildout.
So where does that leave the Boulder coffee shop scene?
- Amante for sale
- Playgrounds for sale (and closed until somebody buys it)
- Organica folded about 6-9 months ago
- Sidney’s just sold
- Tea Spot closing
Who is doing well? The obvious ones (meaning they’re always full):
- Amante NoBo
- Folsom St. Coffee
- Laughing Goat
- Logan’s (full all day though?)
- The Cup
- Saxy’s (but see recent post decrying the “success“)
- Starbucks (hahaha) … actually, only the Hill location seems to be consistently busy
- Vic’s (Ideal)
Folsom St.
This place is like the Hill away from the Hill, filled with undergrads it usually is. But now that finals are over and most of the little ones are thinking about graduating rather than pouring over thick chemistry text books, the place is a little more manageable. It was still hard to find a table not in full bright sunlight this morning (good for reading the paper, bad for working on a laptop), but you take what you can take.
This morning the music is a low trip hop, probably XM Chill or something. The voices are low, the espresso-making clatter is minimal, the traffic flowing by on Folsom and Canyon somehow invigorating. That is the weird thing about this place: it’s right on the corner of two very busy Boulder streets, and I mean right on the corner, the walls 15 feet from the curbs. There are windows all around, so you get lots of light and lots of views of speeding cars. But for some reason it works. (Boredom bonus: what percentage of Boulder’s vehicles were manufactured by the Subaru Corporation?) Oh, and work is encouraged: they’ve taken the trouble to install 6-outlet surge protectors on every two-outlet wall socket. Big props to FSCC for that.
As for the coffee? I don’t remember. It’s been awhile and I only had tea this morning, but the tea selection is good.
