The Left Hook Coffee

The Left Hook Coffee: Going the Distance In the heart of North Carolina’s well-lauded Research Triangle, home to: the capital, several of our most prestigious universities, no shortage of major employers, and, among other things, a plentiful supply of coffee shops, the Left Hook Coffee rolls with the punches. The counter I found it by chance and by proximity, the shop being walkable from my first apartment in Raleigh. For much of its time, the Left Hook has been a coffee counter within a local bar. The only indication that you’ve arrived is a hand-painted sign out front pointing to a business with a different logo on the door. Inside, there’s not much more than a bar and some shared seating within the larger restaurant. No major sign or banner on the walls – everything that is the Left Hook’s is everything that is impermanent. And yet, every day the place is filled with people. Filled with the soft din of laughter and conversations, with people bent over laptops and posted up in the comfier seats with books. Small groups gather around two stools that are pushed to the side so they don’t crowd the register. They lean against the bar, bending in and out of conversation with the baristas as orders come through, making plans for the afternoon. There are also the normal coffee shop sounds (whirring grinder doling portioned espresso, screaming milk steamer, the tapping of the tamp for the next shot) and a cabinet with bagged whole beans, too. But Raleigh is filled with coffee shops that have these things and yet few ever match the shared-living-room feeling the Left Hook manages every day. There’s (ostensibly) a lot of thought that goes into modern business practices. Everywhere you look, we’re surrounded by over-marketed slogans, turnkey layouts, scalable products and so on until every new chain feels like the last and erases what makes each place unique. Against this, the Left Hook leads with the chin. The image on their coffee bags is the owner’s grandfather. “He’s ...