Brewed Drinks

Zooming in to a smaller scale, I experienced a similar quizzical sensation, happening across a Northwest-style coffee shop in the middle of the most godforsaken corner of Hyde Park and Woodlawn, between train tracks and a giant steam plant.  Run by a sort of quasi-socialist co-operative, the Backstory Cafe not only sells coffee brewed in some kind of fashionable method using ceramic filters, but loose leaf tea, mango lasses, and fine pastries.  

In the cities of the Northwest it is almost inconceivable that a respectable neighborhood not have a coffee shop--that is, a coffee shop that is not merely a Starbucks to which people drive to pick up their drinks and immediately leave.  Rather, these places are where one can go to pleasantly sit, read, study, or chat for awhile, having a tea or a coffee and maybe a scone, late into the night.  And I mean good tea, good coffee, and good scones.  There are places in Hyde Park that are crude approximations of this cultural phenomenon, but none of them are really satisfying.  The best of the shops at the University is undoubtedly in the Reynolds Club, but its tea selection is anemic, and its potentially lovely ambiance is frequently corrupted by unfortunate alternative "noise" of hipster appeal.  The tea is all Twinings tea bags, which are far worse than popular opinion always seems to judge: being from England and having pretty labels simply cannot salvage mediocre tea bags.  The only other extant competition is the Hookah Lounge.  But even the (idiotic) cultural cachet of shisha again cannot rectify mediocre food and second-hand smoke.  In short, nowhere in Hyde Park is good, and while a couple places are vaguely fashionable, fashion is stupid and can't make the deficient sufficient.

So with high hopes and this reservoir of gastronomic frustration, I trekked over to the Backstory Cafe to try it out. Despite being the most bizarre location, the place was quite nice and bright.  I decided to put them to the true test by ditching the tea (which looked very good), and ordering a mango lassi for $3.  Unlike many mango lassis these days which use syrups and bastardized ingredients, this one used nothing but yogurt, a little milk, fresh mango, and ice.  It was theoretically the perfect solution to a hot day.  And it was pretty good, not outstanding, but enjoyable.  The real problem, as I learned when I bought a couple of mangos last week, is that one can't buy good ripe mangoes in Chicago at this time of year (or perhaps ever?).  There are cheap, underripe ones, which have a nice tart flavor, but it's no substitute for the real thing--particularly in a lassi.  So we can give them maybe a B+ for effort and a B or B- in actuality.  Good, but not superlative.  It is certainly an improvement and a step in the right direction, but it is no Intelligentsia or Tea Gschwendner.