Honest Coffee Roasters: Pleasantly Bland or Blandly Pleasant

You decide

Pleasantly bland or blandly pleasant — that’s how Ricky described the atmosphere at Honest Coffee Roasters in Homewood. And to be honest, that’s a pretty apt description.

We found ourselves there about 10:30 on a Monday morning. Most of the tables were occupied by earnest young people earnestly hunched over laptops doing important and earnest things. One elderly couple sat on the sofa. A steady stream of other busy people came in, picked up their drinks or snacks, and left.

We were honestly greeted very warmly at the counter where we found some food and drink menus. The food offerings range from acai bowls to avocado toast to chicken salad on a croissant, and despite there not being any gluten-free bread option, there are a decent number of gluten-free choices on the menu.

I ordered the seasonal yammy latte with oat milk and the burrata avocado toast and opted to add a fried egg. I was told my order was “beautiful” and that made me happy. Ricky got a chai latte with oat milk and the grits bowl with sausage and an egg. His order wasn’t deemed “beautiful” but it was well-received at any rate.

We were given a number, 18, and took a seat by the wall in line with all the earnest people doing earnest things. Honestly, I felt like I shouldn’t talk for fear of disturbing someone’s flow, but hey…if you want to work in the quiet, you probably should not go to a public place.

I was honestly surprised at how quickly our drinks came out and the food was not too far behind. My yammy latte was supposed to be “fall in a cup” and it was, even without one hint of that other fall drink that everyone goes crazy for. This cup of fall was not too sickly sweet as these things can sometimes be, and it was topped with toasted (honestly, sort of singed) marshmallows which at first sip gave me a very sooty sort of flavor, but it all mellowed out, and I really enjoyed the drink.

Ricky reported that his chai latte (the menu says they make their chai in-house) had lots of strong tea flavor with notes of pepper, ginger, and cinnamon. It was not overly sweet either nor was it overly peppery.

Our drinks came in beautiful matte black ceramic cups with matching saucers. I was expecting the food to be served on matching or coordinating ceramic plates, but honestly that couldn’t have been further from the truth.

Ricky’s grits came in a plastic bowl, which was indeed black so I guess I was right about the matching part, and we each received a plastic packet of plastic utensils. The bowl contained a reasonable portion of cheese grits topped with an egg, a sausage patty, and a dab of hot pepper bacon jam which we both agreed was an unusual thing to put on grits, but we were darn glad they did. That little bit of goo really took what is a typical southern breakfast to the next level. All in all he said that the food was honestly very good even though it was a little hard to eat with the plasticware. 

A word about grits — if you are a born and bred Southerner you know the pitfalls that come with ordering grits in a restaurant. They can range from watery and runny to as thick as wallpaper paste, and they are never, ever, ever seasoned correctly. Honestly, it is nearly impossible to oversalt grits. Grits just take all the salt you can throw at it and make it disappear with some sort of cornmeal magic. These grits were honestly the exception to that rule. They didn’t require the addition of anything, not even the tiniest grain of salt. We haven’t had such good restaurant grits since the unfortunate closure of our beloved Urban Standard.

Anyone who can cook grits well is aces in our book, which is why I am willing to overlook the travesty I am about to lay on you and go back to Honest Coffee Roasters in the future.

My burrata avocado toast came in a box. A box, y’all. How in the cat hair are you supposed to eat a knife and fork breakfast when it is buried down in a cardboard box resting on a piece of waxed paper (is it “wax paper” or “waxed paper”?). Where is my beautiful matte black ceramic plate that will showcase the toasty tans, the verdant greens, the creamy whites? Who the hell knows because I got served eat-in food in a take-out box. If I had taken it out, I would have taken it home and put it on a plate! At least the lid was open and at a reasonably inviting tilt, but it’s still a cardboard box.

I’m willing to take a little responsibility here because I honestly have a thing about food served in baskets — I hate it. I don’t like my food served in a deep vessel unless it’s soup. A box is just a cardboard basket. I also don’t like to eat knife and fork food that’s served on waxed paper. The paper inevitably gets all slashed up and soggy, the food runs under it, and you end up eating paper bits. i\It's always a mess, and honestly whoever had the idea to serve runny food on waxed paper in the first place can just kiss my a-double-slinky-letters. I can’t stand it!!!

Ok…rant over. 

So here I am faced with food in a box and plastic cutlery. My solution was to unfold the box and spread it out like a cardboard plate which worked pretty well. A plate would have had a nice lip to contain the runny bits, but I managed. I pretended I was camping in a mysterious land with no cutlery and no china and tried to feel like I was on an adventure.

I attacked the burrata avocado toast with the plastic knife and fork, being careful not to cut out a big piece of waxed paper. What I tasted was good, but what I felt was sort of odd. That’s because they put the hot fried egg between some extremely cold avocado mash and an extremely cold, albeit very generous, portion of burrata cheese. Each bite was a mixture of very cold and cool instead of very cold and very hot. I liked the taste of the food, I really really did, but I couldn’t help but wish the egg had been snatched from a sizzling skillet and placed on the top of the cheese so that it would have had a chance of being at least warm by the time I got my box.

Again, I’m willing to accept partial responsibility. Maybe I shouldn’t have requested the extra egg. Maybe I should have gotten bacon or just taken the dish as it was offered. But they did give me options…

Nevertheless, it was, all in lukewarm all, a good thing to eat. I especially liked the addition of Slim’s Hot Honey. I would never have thought to put honey, eggs, and avocado together at home, but honestly I liked it…very much.

Let’s take a moment to talk about decor. Honest Coffee Roasters is a millennial designer’s wet dream. It is all white walls, green plants and gold fixtures. There’s penny tile (white), painted brick (white), and vintage ceiling tiles (also white). There’s some wainscotting (again, it’s white) and a wood counter area (it’s brown) and a leather sofa (it’s black). There are a few plants behind the counter (green, of course) and one bow (red) that I assume is some sort of nod to the Christmas season. It’s all very stark.

And very, very bright.

The ceilings are high high high and the big front windows let light flood in. And by that I mean the front of the restaurant gets so much morning sun that the temperature is actually a few degrees hotter there. And the sun reflects off parked cars, passing cars, the white floors, and the white walls. I was honestly tempted to keep my sunglasses on. Pro tip: Sit with your back to the windows.

It’s a pretty bland space. Honestly, I wondered why, in a city full of artists and makers, there wasn’t some art hanging on all that expansive white space. At the very least just one big painting. Maybe a mural. Something to break it all up. And I’m a little sad that all the old brick has been painted. It would have been a much warmer, inviting environment with some exposed historical brick. But it’s pleasant enough, and I ain’t no designer, so what do I know?

Here’s what I do know. As white white white as the main area is, the bathroom is dark dark dark. The floor is black, and, like most restaurant bathrooms these days, the walls are tiled halfway up (in black) and the rest is a fancy wallpaper (black and white floral). All the fixtures are gold, naturally. The lighting is very dim. But the one restroom was nice and clean and served its intended purpose.

Here’s how we rated Honest Coffee Roaster on a scale of 1 to 5 coffee cups, 1 being the worst and 5 being the best:

Atmosphere: ☕️☕️☕️

Food: Ricky — ☕️☕️☕️☕️ Audrey — ☕️☕️

Service: ☕️☕️☕️☕️

Bathrooms: ☕️☕️☕️

Gluten-free and vegetarian options are available, but vegan options are limited for those who don’t eat honey.

As it turns out, pleasantly bland and blandly pleasant are a pretty good description. It’s a happy (albeit white white white) place and the food is pretty good, the coffee is great, the people are sweet, and the lighting is nice if you want to take a selfie in the main area and not the bathroom. (Why are bathroom selfies even a thing?) Honestly, we’ll probably go back more than once because, well…cheese grits. And because yammy should be the new you-know-what. And because I’m honestly an eternal optimist, I’ll hold out hope that maybe all the china was dirty the day we were there and the next time I’ll get a plate.

P.S. Two more quick notes: 

They have the tiniest little plastic water cups I’ve even seen! It’s like the cup Nurse Ratched would give Jack Nicholson a pill in. 

Underneath the all tables and chairs is sound deadening foam which I’m sure is helpful since there’s nothing else to catch the waves. 

Honest Coffee Roasters in Homewood, Ala.