Coffee

Some­times, the only way to truly expe­ri­ence a place is to spend a lot of time there. Like, an entire afternoon.

I did exactly that last Sat­ur­day by spend­ing at least five hours in one of down­town Knoxville’s newest addi­tions: the Cof­fee and Choco­late cof­fee shop.

But this wasn’t the first time I’d vis­ited the shop, located on 327 Union Avenue just around the bend from Mar­ket Square.

My fiance and I swung by on that occa­sion because we had never come across the store before then. That, and we’re both cof­fee fanatics.

That first trip gave us a chance to try an excel­lent choco­late and cheese­cake con­coc­tion (whose offi­cial name escapes me) and the coffee.

Both were tasty — my fiance wasn’t that impressed with the dessert how­ever, I’m more eas­ily swayed — though the cof­fee wasn’t that far in qual­ity or fresh­ness than that of The Golden Roast, located near the UT campus.

Also, I was a bit miffed that the barista couldn’t tell me where their cof­fee was sourced — this hap­pened on both trips I made to the shop. Instead I was told to ask the absen­tee owner.

But atmos­phere is very nice with sparse decor, and a very urban feel.

There aren’t very many tables, so be pre­pared to stand or enjoy your cof­fee and treat elsewhere.

And since Cof­fee and Choco­late offers free wire­less there stands a good chance most of the tables will be filled by the Internet-hungry crowd. I def­i­nitely fall into that group.

Since my fiance and I met in a cof­fee shop, we’re both excep­tion­ally picky about these places. In fact, we believe you can judge a city based on the qual­ity of its cof­fee shops.

Knoxville wasn’t doing well in this regard, but the down­town addi­tion of Cof­fee and Choco­late could help boost its cred. At least with us.

If you want to read more about Cof­fee and Choco­late, Metro Pulse has a more in-depth review. And knoxnews just pub­lished a “Ran­dom This” video of pro­ducer Lau­ren Spuhler’s visit to the shop.

This is a guest post by Patrick Bee­son, a Project Man­ager for E.W. Scripps Inter­ac­tive News­pa­per Group in Knoxville, TN.