So Blahblahben, Mr Bill, EspressoFrap and I made a trip out to Intelligentsia Venice a week or so back. The shop is located on Abbot-Kinney road, in the heart of Venice. It's surrounded by hipster botiques and cool cafe's, so we knew that we were in intelligentisa neighborhood. Parking in front of the store was difficult to come by, but fortunately, at Mr Bill's advice, we found plenty of parking in the back. The first pic is of from the rear entrace of the shop.
The layout of this place was a little bit confusing. There were numerous stations from which we can order our coffee from. We didnt know whether where to line up to begin the whole experience. We followed our herd mentality and got at the end of the longest queue that we could see (at the front of the building). Apparently, the pastry display is our starting point (see pic 3). From there, a traffic cop will direct you to the next available barista who will take your order. Since there were 4 of us in our group, we were all served by the same barista. We all had the Kenyan, while blahblahben had the Los Inmortales, El Salvador. They brewed our coffees in the Clover coffee makers (see pic 2), which are now owned by Starbucks. The one downside of the experience was that our barista got blahblahben's order wrong.
Inside the store, they sold their seasonal coffee offerings, of course. But in addition, they also sold various coffee wares: coffee makers, grinders, they even sold the toddy system, which is pretty neat (this is the cold brewing system).
Overall, the experience at Intelligentsia Venice was okay. a little bit confusing in terms of ordering, but coffee was good.
The overall experience was fun and worth doing. While the coffee was definitely very good, I'm not sure it was $6-for-roughly-a-Starbucks-grande-size good.
ReplyDeleteI found it a little bit confusing, it might have been because we had a group of 4 people together. I wanted to buy a pastry to go with my coffee, and didn't get a chance to do that. And the ambient sounds + music that was blaring, made it hard to hear the barista. The coffee was ok. A little to acidic for my tastes. The same coffee prepared in the Aeropress at home was better. I think it's because I use 2 scoops for a 16oz cup, and they probably stick to the scoop per a 6oz rule at the shop. So they used more beans than I'm used to.
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