A place that does
not hurry.
Margaret Hollis opened the doors on Greenhouse Row in the autumn of 1974. The neighborhood was quiet then. A few artists, a print shop, the botanical society two blocks north. She pulled espresso on a second-hand La Pavoni and sold bread she baked in a rented kitchen before dawn.
The space has changed hands twice since then, each time to someone who understood what it was trying to be. Not a concept. Not a brand. A room where the morning moves slowly and the coffee is worth paying attention to.
We grow herbs and a few flowers in the greenhouse attached to the rear of the building. Some end up in the drinks. Some end up on the plates. Most are just there to look at.
118 Greenhouse Row · 1974
Sourcing
The coffee comes from three farms we have bought from for more than a decade. Ethiopia, Guatemala, Colombia. We visit once a year. The bread flour is stone-milled sixty miles north. The produce arrives twice a week from a farm in Decatur that has been supplying us since 1991.
The Greenhouse
The glass structure at the back of the building predates us by thirty years. We use it to grow the herbs and flowers that go into the Botanicals section of the menu. Nettle, chamomile, mint, lemon verbena. In winter, paperwhites and forced bulbs. Nothing is wasted.
The Room
Fourteen tables. A long counter with six stools. No music after nine in the morning. The room is designed for people who want to sit and think, read, or talk quietly. We have never installed speakers. We do not intend to.
We are not a third wave coffee concept. We are a place.
Margaret Hollis, 1974