Author: ENU

November 22, 2013
Actual Café
6334 San Pablo Ave. @Alcatraz, Oakland, CA
http://actualcafe.com/
Review date: November 2013

As we settle Carlos' mom Inez into her new routine at Mercy Retirement & Care Center, we try to balance new activities at Mercy (without knowing many people yet she's very timid about participating alone) with some of her "old" routines. 

Her Monday Tai Chi class is at a Berkeley center that's on the Oakland/Berkeley border. We have driven through this neighborhood a zillion times in our two decades of East Bay life, but never had a reason to hang around before. With Inez's class only being an hour long, we can't go very far due to the time constraints. 

We've fallen into the habit of just going somewhere for a cup of coffee and passing the time with a book and laptop. We tried the two nearest McDonald's – don't laugh, their McCafe lattes are actually quite good – but didn't like the morning atmosphere of either one. Then I remembered that Actual Café is nearby. As we've been meaning to try it for a while, we drove over to check it out.

It's not a comfortable place, with the usual Wi-fi hogging folks eking out a cup of coffee as long as they can, on hard bench seats with tiny tables. It's popular with the neighborhood, so finding a seat was difficult. We ended up in a corner by a window that was thankfully closed but the icy draft from its old leaky frame was considerable.

All of that could have been forgiven had the coffee been good…but it wasn't. Carlos' cappuccino was average, but my decaf cappuccino totally sucked. It ranked with some of the worst I've had: weak, sour, acidic. 

Bleh. We'd have been better off with the homeless crowd at the McDonald's down the street.