new favorite coffeehouse

The best vanilla latte I've had was at Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf, that sadly has no locations in the metro area (or on the East Coast, for that matter). I guess a runnerup would have been Ground for Enjoyment. I think I may now have come close to finding a substitute: Murky Coffee.

I end up in Arlington once a week for a writers' group and have met up with a friend who lives there a few times. Today he introduced me to the Murky Cup, claiming it to be incredible coffee. Now...as I said above, I've firmly declared my love for Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf*, and I'm pretty picky about my coffee, so I was a little skeptical.

So I order my vanilla latte (I drink enough regular 'drip' coffee at home) and I am so not disappointed. It was almost, if not just, as a good as CBTL. At least as good as GFE. It was warm, not thick, but not watery, and the foam was wonderfully silky smooth and was practically blended with the coffee. Sometimes at some places you can really taste the seperation between foam and coffee. But not this afternoon. And it wasn't too sweet either, which is another problem I've had with some vanilla lattes.

I got there a little early and it was so wonderful to sit back with my book (The Agony and the Ecstacy by Irving Stone...very good so far) and enjoy the early evening. Virginia was much cooler and a little less humid than DC. Or maybe that's just because we were sitting close to the street and the rush from the cars created a nice breeze.

I look forward to going back and suggest that if you're in Arlington, check it out. It's on the corner of Wilson and Washington, I think. My friend enjoys the drip, I am currently in like with the vanilla latte (check back in a few weeks...it might be more serious then. Who knows? It could be love).

*On a side note, a CBTL opened up near campus my senior year and I had a card where if you bought so many coffees, you got a free one. And because I was so in love with this coffee, and knew that there wasn't one in Texas and this was my last time to get it whenever I wanted, I dragged my friend V to it nearly every day before class during Mayterm. I got my free coffee a few days before graduation, I think. Oh Coffee Bean...I miss you.