Noah Phillips
Mermaid Café, 1929 Winnebago St., in Schenk’s Corners, is aptly named. There’s a sense of having walked into a shop located on a rocky, salty stretch of New England seashore. The stools and counters look like driftwood. On one wall colorful chalk drawings of three charming mermaids decorate a giant blackboard.
Mermaid Café serves only one coffee roast for all of its drinks — Just Coffee’s Farmhouse Roast. The beans are grown in Bolivia, which is just starting to emerge on the specialty coffee scene, and Guatemala,
a well-known favorite.
I had a cold brew, which Mermaid keeps in gallon-sized glass jugs under the counter. The drink itself is advertised as dark, intense and bold, but perhaps the ice diluted my serving because the beverage came across as more subdued.
It was refreshing, on this warm and humid day, to sit outside at the little sidewalk tables and swig this drink — so much so, I had to have two of them.
