Coffee Culture Catching on in Roxborough

Coffee Culture Catching on in Roxborough

Coffee addicts are a rare breed among fiends. Instead of moving on to harder substances our habit tends to become snobbier and more pretentious. In the beginning instant coffee is perfectly acceptable, but before long we find ourselves asking the waitress at the diner how fresh the pot on the burner is and buying stylish bags of whole bean French roast rather than the efficient red cans of Folgers that were once a staple of our shopping lists.
While it seems as though every corner in center city Philadelphia offers to cure the urgent need for venti-caramel-macchiatos and doppio-skinny-mochachinos, until recently Roxborough has been left in need of places to score a quick and easy coffee fix.

With the recent opening of Spoon’s Coffeehouse, sandwiched between the Veterans Bingo Hall and Pina’s Pizza in Andorra, and Crossroads Coffee in the Ridge Avenue business district rush hour traffic will never again stand between local residents and a butterscotch-breve-cappuccino.

But this is Roxborough; cookie cutter corporate coffee shops won’t quite fill the bill. At Starbucks a green smocked barista will actually correct you if you make the faux pas of ordering a medium coffee (Grande house blend is what you mean to say). It is one thing to be pretentious about your own coffee habit, but it is a whole other issue when the person making your coffee is snotty about it.
One visit to Spoons Coffeehouse and it is clear that this café isn’t modeled after the cold assembly line coffee shops that infest the urban landscape across the country.

Maybe the most striking thing about Spoons is the simple matter of ample parking. It seems like a small thing but it is also becoming a rare thing. Beyond the availability of front door parking, Spoons bares little resemblance to a typical coffee shop. The wood console television might possibly be older than the vintage martial arts movie playing on the screen. The music alternates between classic rock, blues and early punk. Stools at the counter and the neon “coffee” sign in the window give the place more the feel of a neighborhood pub than a queued-up coffee-stop and my cup of joe was actually served in a genuine “Mr. T and the A-team” thermos.

Given Spoon’s owner Ben Magid’s background, it is no surprise that his business is decidedly un-corporate. Magid’s restaurant résumé includes the White Dog Café, Farmacia and Jack’s Firehouse, all establishments that built their reputations by purchasing from local suppliers and sustainable small farms –Spoons gets all of its coffee from Kimberton Coffee Roasting Company, near Phoenixville, one of a handful of coffee roasters in the State.
“I wanted to do something different with Spoons,” says Magid, himself a local resident. “This area doesn’t need another Starbucks. I don’t want Spoons to be the kind of place where Frasier would hangout. I want it to be the kind of place where I would hangout.”

Magid’s pedigree also explains another unique feature of Spoons: good food rather than sandwiches in plastic wrap. The menu is small but offers choices from peanut butter, banana, Nutella sandwiches (crust or no crust) to a secret recipe chicken salad sandwiches that had one customer quipping at a recent tasting, “Maybe you should change the name to Spoons Sandwich Shop”. In the non-smoking dining room plenty of tables and chairs are available for a quick lunch and the comfortable “living room” is perfect for relaxing with a good book and a bagel.
Someday in the near future our town might resemble a hipster urban village with Tully’s and Seattle’s Best cafes at every traffic light –but let’s hope not.