Sometimes, a good cafe isn’t a cafe at all, it’s a feeling: as you sit at a window while the sun wakes with you, a warm — but not over-familiar — waiter offers you a coffee. If you’ve been here before, they might have remembered your usual, but will check to make sure. A clean menu arrives along with your drink of choice. It reads as an expression of the seasons, is expertly balanced, and deeply considered. Then you order what you always do, and the waiter simply gives a knowing smile.
Time at a good cafe could be measured by the gentle wake-up ding of the bell on the pass and the turning of pages in the Sunday paper, or by the bustle of customers in and out of the door, and the get-down beat of chart-toppers. But one thing is for certain: you’ll always be left wondering how soon is too soon to return.