A flaneur in South Bend: Counterspell Café

One thing I’ve learned this semester is that the graduate student running club at Notre Dame doubles as a coffee club. That makes sense, I guess, since coffee is the drug of choice for those of us who couldn’t get enough of college the first time around. How many dissertations would remain unfinished if not for caffeine? Someone petition the NIH for emergency funding, quick. Let’s find a PI before all the scientists flee to Canada and China.

I kid, I kid. In all seriousness, though, coffee is an integral part of the graduate student scene here. That’s why, on select Saturday mornings, when the football team is on vacation or traveling, and campus is spared the hullabaloo of home games, the running club congregates outside a local café in the area. We jog a few miles in the nearby vicinity before finishing at the coffee shop and treating ourselves to food and drink. Usually, we run about ten people deep. Mix the adrenaline from the run with the adrenaline from the coffee, and you get an unusually vivacious bunch of grad students. 

This past weekend’s coffee run was especially noteworthy because it involved a coffee shop that just opened last month. Counterspell, as it’s called, is a spin-off of the widely popular Cloud Walking Café, which is located east of downtown South Bend. The city’s newest coffee spot sits on the corner of Portage Avenue and California, on the main thoroughfare of the Near Northwest Neighborhood. When we walked in fresh off our five-miler up Riverside Drive, there was a 30-minute wait for drinks. Crazy, I thought. But then I remembered how fanatical people are about Cloud Walking. Despite ongoing street construction around the original café, they stream in by the dozens on the weekend, parking be damned. Counterspell seems to be much of the same. I bumped into an acquaintance of mine who joked that the cafe was living up to its name. By this, she meant that there was some sort of sorcery behind its popularity. That, or some secret ingredient they’re not telling us about. 

As I sat my sweaty self on a corner stool by the register and took in the scene, I made note of what people were ordering. One of the most popular drinks was the fortune’s favor, a latte with caramel, all spice, nutmeg and sweet potato flavoring. The visuals were interesting. The barista had placed what looked like a cubed marshmallow on a stick over the mouth of the cup. The two girls in our group who ordered it found the set-up amusing. We joked that it was actually fried tofu with sugar. All jokes aside, they enjoyed it. One of the guys in the group ordered the goodberry — a mix of tonic and espresso with hints of blackberry. Apparently, mixing tonic with espresso is a thing. He said it was good, so go figure. For myself, I ordered a cappuccino, my go-to. Lo and behold, it tasted just like the cappuccinos at Cloud Walking — kind of nutty and more coffee flavored than milky. I didn’t order any pastries or food because I had a meal waiting for me back home. But the people in my group said positive things about the raspberry torts and the cookies. 

Aesthetically, Counterspell is miles apart from Cloud Walking. Unlike Cloud Walking, which has a sunless backroom where most people sit to work on their laptops or socialize in small groups, Counterspell gets tons of natural light. There are no Pride flags or socially conscious placards on the windows, so the ambience is decidedly apolitical. The furniture, including a sofa and sofa chair in the corner of the shop, is all new, in contrast to the couches at Cloud Walking, which are unabashedly second-hand and worn. Counterspell looks like a café you might encounter in some semi-upscale corner of downtown Chicago. Lured by novelty and journalistic duty, I went back the next day. It was around midday and there was a lull in foot traffic, as you can see in the picture. But by the time I got my second drink, the café was packed. I was lazy about cooking that afternoon, so I ordered a ham and cheese sandwich. I was struck by the ham’s tenderness — I was expecting Jimmy John’s and I got some Boar’s Head-type cut, instead. To drink, I ordered an iced Americano that hit the spot. As the afternoon wore on, I ordered a cappuccino. Good vibes all around.

By chance, just before closing time, I ran into one of the girls who jogged with us on Saturday. I was sitting on the same stool, except this time I was freshly showered and wearing decent clothes instead of sweat pants and a t-shirt. As we exchanged pleasantries, she brought up her chai latte to her nose and took in the aroma. Part of me was embarrassed to find her there again. But part of me was amused that we were both hooked. Until someone comes up with a 12-step plan for coffee, I’ll keep haunting South Bend’s coffee shops on the weekends. I’ll keep doing this flaneur thing. And I’ll keep smashing espresso drinks. Peace.