Miami Crawl & “Good Coffee Shops”

Hey What’s up! Time Flies, I can’t believe it’s been three months since my last blog. The longer it’s been the more I feel like I need to write something big when I come back! Well, this isn’t very big but it is important. A blog about our trip to Miami. I’m listening to Alex G’s Trick. But I’d also like to recommend the Beths new album “expert in a dying field.” Great barebones indie rock : ))). I’m drinking WATER! It’s been a day. People keep asking me about my drive down to Miami. I’ve got a few thoughts on that, which are below.

YOU TOOK A DAY OFF?

Well yea, I mean it was on Monday which is usually my day off, we’re closed, but on those days I actually just do paperwork for a few hours at a local cafe then pass out or clean the house or something. However, this time I needed to recharge mentally and in spirit, so I traveled. I love traveling, driving for hours and seeing new things makes me feel alive. I’ve never spent more than an hour in Miami, and I wanted to visit a shop that seemed to be doing cool things, @superwowcoffee

They do “japanese inspired espresso” and what we had was great. I had an ube latte made with coconut condensed milk. Something I didn’t know existed and literally blew my mind. the coconut condensed milk I mean, we actually have ube muffins on bar here at tetherball right now. I don’t like condensed milk because it goes bad and is a nightmare to work with on bar. There’s not much about condensed milk that you can’t do with cream or something. Coconut milk is typically too thin or full of additives. I could talk about this all day, but I won’t.

DAYS OFF! Are important. They’re a necessary investment in your mental health and you need to be spending time on that just as much as anything else. Personally I love seeing other cafes and trying to grasp what makes them valuable to their community or their baristas. So visiting a new major city is huge! I had so much to chew on and we drove though some beautiful Florida towns like Boca Raton. It made me feel super fulfilled quickly and like a mini vacation for my mindset ya know?

SO HOW WAS MIAMI COFFEE?

Well if you know beach towns, the beach area it about tourism. The coffee shops closer to the beach on the island were pretty touristy and not very specialty. Which is fine. I’m not gonna name names. We were like, "we gotta get some cubano cortaditos on the beach” and we got three of them from three different nice looking coffee shops, and they sucked. way over-extracted, no sugar as far as I could tell, but these small probably single-location shops looked like starbucks. Mad efficient mad nice mad clean. They looked great! Coffee wasn’t great. I had a croissant and a muffin and some juice, all that was kick butt, but the coffee was butt. Ce la vie. We walked the beach and it was super pretty, was cool to be out there making memories, and that was the point. The point of life and driving down to Miami

We got there Sunday night and had some great ramen at “Ichimi” ! The next morning we went to have breakfast off the island at “All Day” (@alldaymia). Best breakfast I’ve had in a long time, and all I had was empanadas. OJ. espresso (from @rubyroasters). Ty got a burger with a fried egg, clearly farm fresh with a dark orange yolk. Dakota got a salad with some fresh butter lettuce, and after trying my juice got some too. Can’t remember what they had to drink, none of us shared. It was all that good. Even if we couldn’t tell, the menu was deep with sourcing notes and descriptions of how good this food was going to be. I try to take the opposite approach and have a minimal menu at Tetherball, so we have low friction during ordering, and we can surprise people with great drinks. At a sit-down place like All Day there’s something to be said for how effective their menu is, I was loving reading it as much as I loved all our food. My only critique was how packed the place is, on the one hand you can’t really blame them because it’s business, but personally I would have preferred a more walkable space where fewer people could have more attention.

After all day we went up and down the city, it’s all a blur of caffeine and highways. I will say that the people at @imperialmoto made us feel cared for and like they were a part of their community, their merch was cool! I had a nice conversation with someone who wants to do coffee forever at @Breezeblockcoffee, and I hope I made him feel like it was possible.

We made it to superwow and met Talita one of the two owners. We had great drinks and it was a cool place, I hope everyone goes and supports them forever. My takeaway there was that you should put stuff on the menu that you want to make and serve. make a space you love, the rest will take care of itself. That brings me to the next part.

WHAT EVEN IS A “GOOD” COFFEE SHOP?

Well my favorite shop was probably Mane just north of miami in Boca Raton. I walked in and loved the place, the baristas were genuinely comfy and nice instantly, we had great coffee. I made them drink a georgia brand canned coffee, they just got bought by coke so one of my side goals was to grab a can at @superwowcoffee while they were still probably in their original state. it was, okay. anyways.

So why was Mane my favorite? well they had a bright open space, the menu was small and cool, and it seemed like they do good work. instantly I wanted to be there every day. Simple effective comfortable design was what I loved, and what I valued. quality too, it’s obvious right away. I didn’t feel like any of the other shops were super comfortable, even if I loved what they were doing inside. The ability to drive up to this sunny neighborhood place, and then for the inside to be killer and open and walkable, that was great. No pressure.

I didn’t like miami as a city, it’s not for me. So the coffee scene was a little cold. I think that’s recontextualized some of my goals for tetherball. I like my soft chairs and low bench. I like my simple outside seats. I like that we’re in a strip by a neighborhood. I like the cloth menu but i’m ready to kill the winter decorations. I understand better why not everything translates to pictures, why wood floors are so important. I love my space, and there’s more I can do.

Those are my thoughts, thanks for reading if you did, have a great day. Happy early valentines. - Elias