People love it when it’s hot and steamy, especially on those cold lonely nights. You feel the need to take it slow. You may blow on it, to get it just how you like it and stick a finger in it to make sure it doesn’t burn when you swallow. Become one with it. Embrace it with one hand, sometimes even cup it with two hands as you hold it to your mouth. Go nuts with chocolate and do not feel to shy to like the sweet cream on top. It is so good to get it at home, but sometimes you got to switch it up a little and go out to get some—we all know it’s better when you pay for it.
Ah, coffee. Western New York has its fair share of alluring cafes, diners, and coffee shops to pleasure your taste buds. Whether you are looking for a good place to get quiet cup of joe, study, have some bubble tea, or indulge in dessert coffees, the Buffalo area has just the right place to feed your need.
The words cheap and well done usually do not go hand in hand, except when it comes to Bao International Bakery and Teahouse on Sheridan Drive. With over half their menu under a dollar, it appears they missed the memo on inflation. Here you can warm your mouth with a large coffee or tea, or even receive a delicious hot cocoa for under a dollar. The food is cheap, too. Choose from a variety of their sandwich-like treats, called Baos, that not only have a light sweet taste in the bread they use, but also fill you up for a mere 85 cents.
However, what this teahouse is mainly noted for is their bubble teas. “Ever since the bubble tea place closed and we moved in, everyone was coming in telling us to sell bubble tea,” claims Melissa Tang, the University at Buffalo alumna who manages the shop. Their top-selling flavor is taro, an Asian root vegetable that is like a potato. Don’t let the image mislead you—it tastes just like a vanilla milkshake. For first time bubble tea-ers, I would like to present this warning to you. You drink the tea by sucking on a hose of a straw, which occasionally allows a ball of goo to come flying through and hit the back of your throat (and you may feel violated the first time). If there is a downfall to this place, store front size might be one; it is not exactly a social extravaganza like SpoT Coffee can be on a weekend night.
Probably one of the most popular and trendy places to get coffee in Western New York would be SPoT Coffee. Their two busiest locations are in the city of Buffalo on Elmwood and at Delaware and Chippewa. Despite SPoT Coffee being a large social meeting ground, it is also not a bad place to go on your own and get some homework done. SPoT Coffee even has extended hours during finals week for all you crammers out there who like to pull all nighters. “Spot is a cool place. I can’t tell you how many times I stayed up all night during their extended finals week hours,” said Jason Galbraith, senor sociology major at UB.
And as far as their coffee goes, it’s not so shabby, holding several local and national “best of” awards. They claim to use 100 percent specialty Arabica coffee beans that are grade-A certified and micro-roasted in small batches for maximum control and freshness. If you have a sweet tooth, you can never go wrong with a delicious SPoT mocha with whipped cream and chocolate syrup on top along with a s’mores bar to pleasure your taste buds. And for all those smoothie fans out there, you never had anything until you try a wildberry jet tea smoothie from SPoT.
For all you UB students that have not yet taken the time or felt the need to see anything more than Amherst, downtown Buffalo, or Niagara Falls, Canada, just remember this one thing if you ever get the balls to leave: Clarence Center Coffee Co. & Café on Clarence Center Rd. For starters, the coffee shop is its own free-standing building, which eliminates the oddness of trying to stick a trendy coffee house in a generic plaza and adds to the small town feel you receive from their excellent customer service. “This is my favorite coffee house because it doesn’t have that corporate feel with its interesting atmosphere,” says Kylie Eoannou, a UB student.
After you order they not only bring your coffee out to you, but they also stop back at least one or more times to check if everything is going alright or if anything else is desired. And as far as their coffee goes, they are not too far behind SPoT with their unique house blend, Koso, made of Ethiopian, Sumatran, French, and Guatemalan coffee blends made exclusively for them, from the Finger Lakes Coffee Co. The unique mix of several coffee beans takes away from the flat bitter taste some coffees may give you allowing people who do not even like dark coffee, to enjoy the Koso blend with no cream or sugar. As far as their food and deserts go, they are right up there with the best, seeing how they won this year’s People’s Choice Award from the Taste of Buffalo with their grilled wrap, the Tahoe Bluze. This mouth-watering wrap is stuffed with freshly sliced turkey, bacon, tomato, mixed greens crumbly blue cheese, and roasted garlic mayo.
If that doesn’t bring you out to Clarence Center, maybe the fact that they have domestic beer and wine along with a nice porch to sit a relax on with your friends will.
Sipping on some hot coffee with your friends is a great pastime and bringing your schoolwork out to a coffee shop makes you feel a little better about doing it. Western New York definitely has some unique locally owned coffee houses that definitely will not hurt to try if all you’ve ever seen was the inside of a Starbucks.
