I finally stopped in Shenandoah Joe’s. Do it!

I love our downtown coffeehouses, but it’s no secret that they just can’t house the volume of “for here” coffee drinkers at peak hours, and I’ve stopped going with plans to stay because I feel self-conscious waiting for a table to open while holding my lap top and hot cup. The trade-off is that the scene is, for lack of a better word, cool. Downtown coffee is a see/be seen scene, like any bar but with a different fix to drink.

So I branched out. The Preston Avenue space is a different kind of cool. I walked the six feet from my parking space to the entrance and was met with a large, open, high-ceiling space with warm colored wells. The smell alone is worth a trip. I have no idea how to describe it, and saying “freshly roasted coffee” would be an understatement.

Half of the space is devoted to the coffee roasting process, with equipment and staff visible to the customers. The other half is set up with tables and furniture I actually wanted to sit in. I stopped in mid-morning on a weekday, and it was busy without being uncomfortable. I can’t believe I’m going to say the following, but it was noticeable: the customers were overwhelmingly cute, with nary a student in sight (except, maybe, behind the register).

I’m not the one to talk about coffee (*cough* Thor *cough*) so I won’t even weigh in– start commenting! But my pumpkin muffin was the best pumpkin muffin I’ve ever had, of the at-least-10 I’ve probably had in my life, and the rest of the pastries looked crazy-good– peanut butter blondies, coconut macaroons, and an assortment of muffins.

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