Coffee in a good setting keeps me there. The place, as you know if you read these columns, matters, almost as much as the coffee. I’m lucky that I can almost always find coffee that keeps me seated. I don’t get takeout; I see cafés as homes away from home, adventures in different cultural spaces, people-watching at its best.
Running a café would be hard because I would always see the space and its offerings from a customer perspective. The bottom line would be sunk so deep that it wouldn’t see the sky. Beside a fleeting fantasy of running a café in Kyoto, I have never envied café owners. I do spend a fair amount of time absorbing the atmosphere, noting design details, judging seating comfort. I still have drawings of my fantasy Kyoto café, and a sketched menu, but it’s wrong to compare a fantasy to an actual coffee-stained pillow on a wooden bench at a Somerville or Cambridge café.
The two Cambridge cafés I visited this past week are what I call ’90s college-town style, welcoming (inclusive and diverse, we would say now) and scrappy in the best sense. This style, acquired by use and time – not artifice – is worn-wood floors, painted wainscoting and postered walls. The contrast with a more contemporary style is evident: Most today-cafés are whiter, cleaner-looking, with more blond, unscuffed furnishings, stainless steel counters and lighting fixtures shaped like industrial-sized mixer whisks.
Circus Collective Cafe
Circus Collective on Putnam Avenue, though only about two and a half years old, reminds me of my graduate student days; it is a home of worn comfort and friendly, uninsistent politics. This quintessentially Cambridge shop housed interesting antecedents: I remember the first iteration of Darwin’s here, also Petsi Pies, and at some point a very good Italian deli. It is a perfect spot for a coffee shop, close to Harvard but in a residential neighborhood on a good street for walkers but not parkers. There is a bench or two outside, but the dark, cool inside beckons on a warm day. Circus offers a bygone experience – if the 1990s could be “old” (it’s not for me; it’s yesterday). Signs on the walls read “What do you want here?” “Sharing is caring” and “Labor creates all wealth.” Others promote events such as clothing swaps and community meetings. There are free condoms, Covid tests and masks.
Dark wainscoting belts the lower third of the room, and teal walls above add pizzazz. The tables near the windows are laptop free; there are seven small tables in total. The chairs and tables are “distressed” naturally, and the floors comfortably worn. It’s a peaceful, mostly social space. Laptops are prohibited on weekends, a provision I’ve seen in more coffeehouses lately.
Every worker here is an owner or is working toward ownership, explained Julianna, who is one of them, and everyone’s decision has the same weight. Julianna emphasized the importance of the shop as a community that in turn serves the wider community.
In keeping with its values, Circus Collective brews coffee with Equal Exchange beans (at the moment, the Mind-Body-Soul blend). Cold brew is a big seller. The shop features guest local roasters, currently Yego of Teele Square. The sandwich menu on the wall offers an “MIT,” a “Harvard,” a “Mt. Auburn” and a “Hummonist” (which I think is a vegetarian hummus). Pastries are from Danish Pastry Co. in Medford and A&J Bakery in Salem.
Circus Collective was full of young attendees of Harvard’s Alumni Day, and people wearing name and class badges brimmed with enthusiasm to the point some celebrants knocked my table, spilling my coffee and anointing my book with brown stains. In the cheerful spirit of the day, I said “A book hasn’t really been read until it has coffee spilled on it.” Apologies were sincere.
Café Zing
No coffee was spilled in the second café of the week, but the place was still shaking with drilling and hammering. Zing, in the newly rechristened Porter Square shopping center, has been under reconstruction for a while and closed to inside seating for a week or more, but I was there for the reopening. The space, long occupied by Zing in front and the Porter Square Book Shop in back, has been Zing alone since PSB moved to the former Sears Building on Massachusetts Avenue and took Page & Leaf as its coffee partner.
The former PSB-Zing space is being cut in half, but the patio – a great people-watching and dog-patting zone) – will remain. According to Nate, a manager, there will be fewer bookstore-era cases, but I hope the banner reading “The Perfect Place to Run into the Person You’ve Been Trying to Avoid,” stays.
Zing’s owner is the multifaceted Mark Ostow, a photographer, filmmaker and civic activist. He works with Cambridge children in summer photo programs and photographs local and national politicians. His photos have shown in a neighborhood photography gallery, Bridge, just off Rindge Avenue. On this visit I sat under a striking photograph of U.S. senator Elizabeth Warren, who has frequented Zing. Mark sometimes works the room, greeting regulars and sitting down to chat, demonstrating his highly personal ownership style.
As for coffee, Zing, like Circus, uses Equal Exchange beans and offers small and large cups of 12 and 16 ounces. This “small” to me is rather large, but there is an almost secret “smaller” of 8 ounces available on request. The roast is a bit dark for me, but well made. The food is in the range of normal for local cafés, with stand-out items such as the delicious vegetarian Vietnamese fresh rolls. Served with a slightly spicy peanut sauce, three are enough for lunch. The sticky buns are good, and the blueberry crumble is popular. The pastries here are also from Danish Pastry, and bread is from Iggy’s. (Tip: An Iggy’s baguette here is only $5.) Of the less- and noncaffeinated beverages, the one I’d put on repeat is blood orange hibiscus tea, which, as in many local cafés, is from MEM Tea. The sandwiches are made by the Kickstand Café, also owned by Mark, along the Minuteman Bike Trail in Arlington Center.
Time of day determines clientele. Toward midafternoon some come to work on a jigsaw puzzle, seemingly without benefit of a cup of coffee. People who come to meet a friend (or that person they’ve been trying to avoid) stay. There is a healthy quotient of older people who, at some times of some days, seem to occupy the same seats; like regulars in an old-fashioned pub, they find community here. The management approach is generous. Zing offers a place for people whose circumstances marginalize them elsewhere. It’s a gift, pro bono publico, and everyone is welcome.
Circus Cooperative Cafe, 31 Putnam Ave., Riverside, Cambridge (8 a.m. to 3 p.m. daily)
Café Zing, 25 White St., Cambridge (7 a.m. to 7 p.m. Monday to Friday; 8 a.m. to 7 p.m. Saturday and Sunday)
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