A large mural inside Crema Coffeehouse advertises that it's been in business since way back in, uh,…read more2023.
Another coffee shop would have pretended to have been in business since the 19th century, before the latte was even invented, but not Crema. It's got *integrity*.
Anyway, no one would believe that anything here is older than a year or two. It all new-looking. It has a certain sheen to it, like somewhere where you'd pay $40 for a Yankee Candle at Plaza Frontenac.
As I arrived today with members of my running group, an unhoused gentleman was being, erm, questioned out front by 12. He may have spent the night in the lobby of this apartment building. It just so happened to be right as Crema was opening. Did they report him to the authorities? Should they have given him a job sweeping the sidewalk out front like the wise old neighborhood drunk in the movie Do the Right Thing, the lovable old James? Instead of bringing him downtown, the police merely confiscated his drugs and sent him on his way. (I hope he wasn't late for work.) I wonder what they do with those drugs. I've seen the movie Bad Lieutenant.
I didn't know whether to be disappointed or relieved that this place doesn't carry a burrito. I love a burrito more than I love most people, but maybe this is not the place to get a burrito. But I figured I probably couldn't go wrong with a breakfast sandwich. You can't make a bad breakfast sandwich. Even a Breakfast Jack is a good breakfast sandwich.
They certainly charge a premium for their breakfast sandwich. I figured this would be a situation where they charge you money out the ass for hardly any food. I was willing to take the hit anyway, for the sake of citizen food journalism, and also because I'd just run umpteen miles. Come to find out, this thing is roughly the size of a football. Its appearance is more along the lines of a torta, the hefty sandwiches from which portly Hispanic girls get their nickname.
Alas, it was just okay. The croissant was ginormous but of middling quality. If it were the same size and as rich as the croissants at Comet Coffee, it would be roughly 10,000 calories, so that may have been for the best. The bacon tasted oddly similar to a Ball Park hot dog, in both a good and bad way. They give you plenty of it, but I suspect they still come out ahead. The eggs would have been fine if they'd been salted. In theory, the salt from the bacon and the cheese would have carried over to the eggs, but I don't know if I have a refined enough palate for that to be the case. I approve of a Breakfast Jack, after all.
I'm willing to accept the fact that the Horchata Latte may have just been a bad order on my part. I may have needed to specify some type of syrup so that it was sweeter than it was and I didn't realize that, because what do I know about fancy coffee drinks? Or I might just not like horchata, with which I have minimal experience. They carry a gooey butter cake latte, and I should have gone with that. It was calling my name the way crack calls the guy they called the cops on.
Which brings me to the Gooey Butter Cake Edges, which caught my eye in the pastry case, as if my sandwich and drink alone weren't caloric enough. I like gooey butter cake (natch), and I like the idea of "cake edges." Would this be along the lines of those brownies that are all corners? It kinda was, except that the crust wasn't quite as crisp as you'd like it to be. I don't think these were the actual edges of a gooey butter cake. They may have just been leftover cake batter baked into strips. It was still delicious, because it was gooey cake. The actual gooey butter cake may have been better. Again, I'm willing to take credit for what may have been a mistake on my part.
Like the lovable old James, we all make mistakes sometimes. Crema has only been around for a few years, so I'm sure it's only a matter of time until they get their few issues ironed out. The decor is already top notch.