This morning, I got up early for a fun mini adventure that touched on two of my favorite things: coffee and the city of Chicago. My friend Ola and I ventured out with The LAB team and fellow tea and coffee lovers for the first ever caffeine crawl around Chicago and it was such a blast! I had so much fun live tweeting and snapping all of our stops! Check out my tweets here and follow me on Snapchat at bowtifullife to see the “My Story” coverage of the crawl! We were in Session 1 – Route 2 which started at 8:30am and took us on a 2.5 mile walking route to Delicious Cafe, Bad Wolf Coffee, Osmium Coffee Bar/Dark Matter Coffee, Dollop Coffee Company, and TeaGschwendner.
Stop number one was Delicious Cafe!
3827 North Lincoln Avenue
Chicago, IL 60613
This vegan cafe had an absolutely amazingly smooth cold brew and some delicious salted caramel brownies! They use Chapín Coffee, a company which helps to feed children and sustain farmers in the areas in which their beans are grown in Guatemala. Delicious is the only cafe that sells Chapín currently. My favorite things about this stop were the logo, a cute little sloth in a coffee cup, and the “mock-accino” (they’re still in the process of picking a name) which was like a frappuccino, but better. It was made with coconut milk and the white chocolate flavor we got to try was absolutely fantastic!
Our next stop was Bad Wolf Coffee.
3422 North Lincoln Ave
Chicago, IL 60657
This was definitely one of my favorite stops on the caffeine crawl. This cute coffee shop’s name may sound familiar to Dr. Who fans and they have a Tardis painted on the wall in one corner of the space. At Bad Wolf we got to try a delicious sort of coffee cream soda made with coca nibs, espresso, some sort of dairy, and club soda. I absolutely loved this drink and would definitely go back to order a full size of it some time in the near future. The atmosphere here was super fun and I really appreciated how colorful the space was!
Our third stop was Osmium Coffee Bar / Dark Matter Coffee.
1117 West Belmont Avenue
Chicago, IL 60657
Osmium had a fantastic interior and I loved their decor as well as their super colorfully decorated patio! We got to try their chocolate city iced coffee and I can honestly say that it was some of the best iced coffee I’ve had in a while! In the shop itself, there were tons of customers doing work on their laptops or chatting with friends while enjoying their coffee. This spot seemed like it would be a fun place to go to hang out or work on homework with a few friends on a weekend!
Next, we headed to Dollop Coffee Co. in Lakeview.
824 West Belmont Avenue
Chicago, IL 60657
Dollop uses one of my favorite companies, Metropolis Coffee, for their beans! We got to try the Sumatra and Ethiopia blends made with both a Chemex and an AeroPress. I think that my favorite out of all four ways we tried the coffee was the Ethiopia blend made with the AeroPress. I feel like I learned the most about brewing coffee at this location and I picked up a few tips and tricks that I’ll use in the future when I’m making my coffee.
Our final stop was TeaGschwendner on Diversey.
556 West Diversey Parkway
Chicago, IL 60614
TeaGschwendner only sells the top half percent of all tea produced and they have forty world champion tea flavors as well as the honor of being considered one of the top three companies in North America for their flavored and black teas. They have two Chicago locaions and their next closest location is all the way in São Paulo Brazil! After finishing my cup of tea that they provided us with, I got to smell their delicious Fancy White Peony Organic Loose Leaf Tea. It smelled so good I almost bought some right there on the spot! I’ll definitely be bringing my mom here some time since she loves tea just as much as I do!
A massive thank you to The LAB team for having us, we had a great time!
Special thanks to Ola Wysocki Photography for helping me document this fun event!