Between stand-up gigs on the road, comedian Alex Falcone looks for cafe reviews that are begrudgingly good.
Guest column by Alex Falcone
I love a two-star experience. Not Michelin-two-star — but when a random Yelp or Google review says a coffee shop is worth only two stars, that’s when I pay attention.
I’m on the road a lot for my job as a (probably someday) incredibly successful comedian. The indulgence I seek out in the few short hours of downtime I have in each city is good coffee. And I mean really good coffee — the kind that takes longer to make and costs more than some restaurant meals. When people say millennials can’t buy homes because of $5 lattes, my first thought is, “You mean the cheap stuff?”
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Finding the best shops — Coava in Portland, Ore.; Brioso in Columbus, Ohio; or Sey Coffee in Brooklyn — can be tricky, but I have a hack that works extremely well: I read mostly bad reviews, specifically two-star ratings.
We all know that one- and five-star reviews are useless; those are just crackpots and bots. Three stars are for cowards, obviously; if you can’t be bothered to have a courageous opinion, I can’t be bothered to read it. And four stars are for liberal arts majors who had a three-star experience but grew up with grade inflation.
But a two-star review, that’s a thing of beauty. Somebody who goes through the trouble of logging into an app and typing full sentences on a keyboard to give a place exactly two stars has a story to tell. Most likely, they’re for-real mad but not so mad they forget that they live by a code. A person who selects the snake-eyes of ratings is seething about something but feels honor-bound to give credit where credit is due. That’s the stuff.
Two-star coffee shops have the same theme running through their reviews: “the barista was so rude, but the coffee was good.” The drink was so excellent that the reviewer couldn’t give it one star even if they might have been fuming over the uncomfortable stools or the lack of WiFi and power outlets.
They were coping with the impact of some slight, perceived or real, and they fired up the app, ready to unleash their righteous anger on the internet. But then they took a sip and their vitriol was temporarily interrupted by the terrible admission “Oh, man, that’s pretty good though.”
They wanted to write a full pan, but they must compromise. They explain that while this is certainly no way to run a business, scoffing at customers who ask for sugar-free boysenberry syrup, the second star is because the coffee did taste good.
That’s the only kind of coffee I have time for, a cup that’s good enough to cut through hurt feelings. That’s worth the $13 for a market-priced pour-over with no refills.
The vast majority of the time I visit a two-star cafe, the barista isn’t even rude. And in the cases they were right, and the barista was rude for no reason, I still side with the service workers. I’m not saying I want to hang out with these fragile reviewers, but what they reveal is priceless.
I prefer employees who don’t put on an act about loving their jobs. I know how jobs work. Most people aren’t pulling shots at 7 a.m. for the love of the game. I’d take a curt employee over somebody with a huge smile forcing me to justify my lack of weekend plans any day. Plus I love the swagger of a business that makes a product so good they don’t have to pretend to like selling it to you. If the Soup Nazi made bad soup, he would just be a Nazi.
Maybe you prefer your coffee cheap and your employees groveling. Fine. Please let me know how wrong I am. But you have to concede there were some good points in here, too. Thank you in advance for the two stars.
Alex Falcone is a comedian based in Los Angeles. Follow him on Instagram @alexfalcone.