My boyfriend, Milad, and I have a cute little tradition where we check out a new café every Friday morning. We try to go to small ones around the city that aren’t part of a chain, and try to get drinks that are special to that café.
Usually, he picks the café and I just agree, because he’s lived in the city longer than I have and he’s really good at finding them! However, I found a café on my own this week and I was really excited to take him.
I randomly saw an advertisement for an apartment where you could “live above the True Love Café!” and I thought, wow, that’s really cute-sounding. A true love café? Since we’re café connoisseurs, we should definitely go. It turned out the café was only a few minutes away from my apartment so we started the journey.
The building was painted bright purple with hearts and other love-themed decorations.
“What is this, an adult toy store?” Milad asked. I said no, it’s a really cute café …
They advertised chocolate chip pancakes inside one of the hearts outside so I got really excited and thought we would have a little romantic café date…. WITH chocolate chip pancakes!
Within three seconds of walking through the doors, I lost my appetite. The smell was enough to turn around and leave. There was a homeless guy sitting on a couch who glared at us. There was a guy with massive dreadlocks and dirty clothes talking to a guy in a suit. All of the furniture looked like it had been donated. There was an entire wall of random boxes of tea.
We walked past everything to the cashier at the other end of the room, not really knowing what to do. I looked around for a menu and they didn’t have their drinks listed anywhere. “What kind of drinks do you have here?” I asked the cashier, looking up.
Only then did I notice that he was wearing scrubs and had knife gashes all over his bald head and face, and he was covered in dried blood.
“We have coffee, tea and pop,” he said plainly.
I was speechless for a second. I quickly ordered a small coffee, not really sure what else to do, and we got out of there as fast as possible. I actually dumped the coffee out because I was a little scared to drink it.
I mentioned to Milad while we were walking home that I had a black eye once while I worked at a convenience store, and that was just from falling on rocks (long story). Point being, maybe that guy just had an accident and we can’t assume anything.
“Erin, those were clearly from a knife. How many ways can you accidentally get stabbed in the head that many times?” He has a point.
I got home and told my roommate that I had been to the True Love Café. “WHAT?! You went there? It looks like a crack house!” Apparently it has a reputation.
It’s safe to say that Milad will be picking the cafés from now on (again)… but the True Love Café was the most interesting one we’ve ever been to!
Here are some pictures from past Café Fridays because I was too scared to take any photos of this one!