When it's worth the wait.

The best place for coffee in Santa Cruz, if you can get beyond the reverential, museum-like atmosphere and slightly sour staff, is Lulu's at the Octagon. (Oooh, and look, Christina Waters agrees with me.) Want a cup of coffee? Select a bean from their menu of over twenty, and they weigh, grind, and brew your selection to order. It's a bit of a change to wait longer for a cup of coffee than an espresso drink, but it's worth it. My cup of Guatemala this morning, brewed in a French press because the electronic press was down, had a pleasing weight and viscosity, a near-chewiness, that I haven't encountered before. I know it's a little strange to talk about coffee in wine-snob terms, but the coffee from Lulu's demands it. It also demands a healthy glug of half-and-half, the only addition to coffee that elevates it beyond its natural state (excluding, perhaps, whipped cream). Black is fine, but you skim milk-ers, you two-cube-ers, you Splenda addicts, you soy aficionados, you are all lovely people I am sure, but you are bad at drinking coffee. Throw your fears of fat and dairy out the window and do a side-by-side, blind tasting. So good, right?

Right.

A note about the food writing in Santa Cruz: so bland! One writer describes the staff at Lulu's as "nice and knowledgeable," and calls the atmosphere "casual and sophisticated." Bah.