« Gymnastics Again | Main | MoMA Photos »
June 14, 2006
Red Horse Cafe
I tried out the newly-opened Red Horse Cafe right up the block last week, since it's a prime candidate for morning coffee and self-indulgent pastry purchases. I'm quite attached to Naidre's at this point, but I have to walk up not-so-pretty 12th street to get there, and the Red Horse Cafe would allow me to change that route.
When I walked in, I noticed that a task force from the Tea Lounge had already staked out the leather couches to take advantage of the free wireless access (strike one). At the counter, a woman with 15 children or so seemed to be in some sort of endless negotiation about which cookie to get for which child, or which cookie should be split in two and be served on different plates for different children, or something like that. She took forever to make up her mind. There were two people behind the counter, and both seemed absorbed in helping her. Neither seemed quite confident enough to be the owner.
When I got service, I asked what the two available baked goods were, exactly. I know the place is new (I think this was the second day), but the woman I asked had to walk back around the other server and look at a piece of paper taped to the register. When she came back, she informed me that the scones contained cherries and chocolate, and the biscuit had cheddar and something else which sounded fine but not what I was in the mood for.
I looked at the scones again closely and was amused to find that they obviously had nothing to do with cherries or chocolate. They had blueberries -- the bits of blue throughout gave that away -- so I figured that they were either three-berry or blueberry and ordered one anyway (it was blueberry and it was good). I also got a cappuccino, just to try things out, and it was pretty awful (strike two, but hey, it takes 10 years to break one of those machines in, right?).
I went back to try their regular coffee yesterday, and I think I might have ordered from the owner. He seemed very nice, but pre-coffee, I'm not much for conversation. The coffee wasn't very good -- way to strong for my taste, which really doesn't bode well for future visits (strike three, sadly). The blueberry muffin was yummy, though. I'm rooting for Red Horse to do well, since it'll improve things on my closest corner, but I think they have some work to do. I really don't think a place with "Cafe" in the name can survive for too long without good coffee. But then again, there's Starbucks.
Posted by csageday at June 14, 2006 01:29 AM