Adventures in Cazenovia: Common Grounds

In Cazenovia just about every place worth visiting is on the main street, like most small towns, and it is here where we found Common Grounds, the local coffee shop. Even though I am an ex-Starbucks employee dating another Starbucks employee and whose brother manages a Starbucks, I love local coffee shops. Some of the best espresso I ever had was at the now defunct Kennebec Coffee in Hallowell, Maine, and one of the worst mochas I’ve ever had was at Common Grounds in Cazenovia, New York.

Don’t get me wrong, my experience here was far from a negative one, they just need to learn how to use an espresso machine.

The café itself is a very spacious, comfortable two rooms with a fireplace and piano in the first room and a large open kitchen adjacent to the other room.

Jenny and I respectively ordered a cappuccino and a mocha for our coffees.

To eat I had an Everything bagel sandwich with sausage, egg, a yellow American cheese that was supposed to be cheddar. It was tasty and fresh, but nothing astounding.

Jenny had a French Toast bagel (what a brilliant idea!) with a good amount of cream cheese.

The mocha I had was lousy, it was made with Hershey’s syrup which makes for a thin tasting drink, the espresso itself was overextracted and bitter, and most disappointingly the milk was way overheated. Having worked in the business of steaming milk for around three years, I know what milk sounds like when it has hit the 160 degree mark and couldn’t help but cringe when the woman behind the espresso machine steamed drink after drink to well over that point and easily into the 180-190 range, it’s a wonder that she didn’t flash the milk (the point where milk boils over suddenly) a dozen times while we were there. Jenny’s Cappuccino was equally overextracted and bitter, not to mention the fact that with milk steamed to the temperature this milk was makes horrible foam.

In addition to coffee and sandwiches, the café also offers a variety of sweets from cakes and pies, to more decedent treats like what Jenny and I ordered. I had a chocolate dipped cannolli which, though not nearly as good as what Boston’s North End has to offer, suited me just fine. Jenny had a downright chocotastic Chocolate mousse housed in a chocolate cupcake shell, which was great, but no utensils were provided so we ended up a little chocolatey by the end of it.

We went back the next day to take advantage of the free wifi (surprising in such a small town, and very welcome) unfortunately the place closed at 3pm, this being a Sunday, so we only had about 45 minutes to sit and surf. Because of this and the sub-par coffee we had the previous morning, we didn’t order anything and instead listened as pseudo-intellectual nerds played the guitar while debating the preferred method of their funerals. Conversation soon degraded into a lively debate of the strengths and weaknesses of Dungeons & Dragons vs. Shadowrun. It somehow all seemed so fitting.