Updated Forecast: In Excess of 8" of Snow, Plus Wind
And Now, 10-20 Inches
Federal Govt. Closed Tuesday
Snowmaggedon 1.0 in Time Lapse
Morning Roundup: After the Snowfall Edition
Mocha Hut, the locally-owned coffee shop at 1301 U Street NW, permanently closed yesterday. Our love for their breakfasts was apparently not enough.
A notice posted on the door this morning reads simply, "Mocha Hut is closed. We sincerely thank you for all of our support," and is ironically posted only a few feet away from a plea for votes in the Washington City Paper's Best of D.C. awards.
According to office staff at the Ellington apartment building, which shares their address, Mocha Hut's owners had planned to stay open until the end of the month, and unexpectedly decided to close early. Another owner plans to take over the space in April. The new owners reportedly plan to keep the business as a coffee shop, though we don't yet know what changes they might make to the space or the menu.
No one answered the phone at Mocha Hut this morning.
UPDATE: The Washington Business Journal says the new business will be called U Street Cafe, operated by brothers Brian and Jim Sullivan.
add to stumble upon
add to reddit
tweet this
post to facebook
My wife went there once and the milk was curdled...yuck. Neither of us ever went again, but it's nice to see local businesses around, even if they can't keep their milk fresh.
The service was slow and the atmosphere was never my favorite. But I REALLY liked mocha hut, the food and lattes were really good. Sad day.
So. what do you call it when something dies, comes back from the dead, and demands you consume it?
That's right. Christianity.
Now, please make me a drink of grain alcohol and rain water, and help yourself to whatever you'd like.
another original tenant in the ellington bites the dust...
This is terribly sad. Going to Mocha Hut for breakfast on the weekends had become a routine for me. I always found service pretty friendly and the atmosphere fun. The food was good for a decent price. And if I went in later on a weekend morning getting a table was difficult, so I'm not sure what the financial motives were behind them closing.
Bummer. I didn't know it was in trouble, but I guess that isn't to be expected given these times.
I thought their breakfasts were really good and a great value (the tuscan especially). The coffee was ok, and the atmosphere wasn't the best, but the breakfast was top notch. I used to eat there on the weekends frequently.
Have we now reached Coffee-pocalypse?
Um, isn't there a Starbucks right on the opposite corner? How many coffee shops does a neighborhood really need? How about something besides a coffee shop, like, I dunno, a $5 cupcake store? Or a head shop? I miss Earthworks and my first U.S. Bong. It was a bright rainbow colored model and like all glass bongs it existed for the sole purpose of being broken by your roommate's drunk friend from out of town. Sure, you can buy bongs online, but it's just not the same. There's a sense of community in a head shop that you can't duplicate in an online transaction. There's comparing the throughput stats, checking the compression, the size of the bowl, how difficult it would be to clean. Then you pick up some Visene and give her a test drive in the car. It's like buying porn from a mom and pop porn shop. The frisson of being trapped with a bunch of creepy old guys is part of the rush that you just can't get from downloading the torrents of "Itsy Bitsy Gang Bang" and "Shaving Ryan's Privates."
There's still at least one pseudo-head shop in downtown DC, the K & B Newsstand on F Street between 10th and 11th. You can pick up your bongs, pipes and screens there, and also meet your tattoo, ninja throwing star and porn needs. If you're truly brave, I'm pretty sure they even have video booths down in their basement . . .
The headshop/porn/stun gun/souvenirs/tattoo shop burned down last month...not that I ever shopped there.
They were closed by DC last fall- before the place *ahem* caught fire. But never fear- they have a sister store in Adams Morgan.
Not that I'd ever shop there.
What that corner really needs, in no particular order: A bank, a laundromat, a Chinese take-out place, or a kite store.
What that corner really needs, in no particular order: A bank, a laundromat, a Chinese take-out place, or a kite store.
Indoor skeet range. Instead of clay pidgeons you shoot at Cakelove's rock-hard $h!tcake cupcakes. But make sure the buttercream frosting gets to room temperature first. Then it gets really explodey.
It's not a corner. It's in the middle of the block. How about another try at a tanning salon? Kidding.
The coffee bubble is burst. The area has added 3 wine bars already. Time for a new bubble.
How about a permanent location for Dee Hunter's campaign offices? He's always running for something.
I'd prefer a Wang computer store.
Peking Express is directly across the street, so the Chinese take-out place is covered.
they should open up a gun shop or a 24 hour peep show. or both.
Twenty-four hour gun store and shooting range, with peep show in the basement, and all-you-can-eat chicken wings and mambo sauce from the Chinese place across the street. Also, a pony.
you should be able to shoot your own chicken (ouch!). or at the peep show participants. or at the pony.
U Street needs a strangle-your-own-poultry pollo la brasa place. They haven't tried that yet. Could call it something snappy like El Pollo Suffacado or something, and they slaughter the chickens in the middle of the dining room floor. And for a floor show, you have cockfighting. And if you're lucky they don't use penises in little Sugar Ray Leonard outfits.
so, in two days, we get announcements for u street cafe and mid-city cafe. someone with a creativity bone needs to get up to that neighborhood and help name businesses, stat, 'cause those two just suck.
It doesn't suck as bad as "Uncle Goatse's Olde Tyme Coffee Cornhole and Pump Room."
Uncle Don's Coffee Chili Beano Bar and Grill
Watership Down and Watered Down Coffee Shop
Ben's Hot and Chili Coffee Bowl
A Deep Cup of Joe
The Flesh Merchants
I'm fond of the name "Bűttcöffee!" The sign should be several feet tall using big shiny metallic letters so customers know they mean business. The interior should be done up to look like a gestapo torture cell, complete with manacles, blowtorches, and gibbets. And with our Frequent Fahrfernugen Klub, with every tenth cup of coffee, you get a free boot in the groin.
how about New Big Wong?
I've been to at least 5 Starbucks in my flesh life. Don't drink coffee that costs more than the cup that's holding it. No, not much. Nosiree.
this is terrible! they had the bestest, softest, most delicious-est gingerbread men EVER!
i bet the rent in that place is out of that world. monkeyrotica needs to open up a gift shop there bearing nothing but tshirts with his witty posts on dcist.
In addition to providing the best in locally roasted coffees in an authentic gestapo-themed Vichy cafe, the gift shop in the Bűttcöffee! lobby is well stocked with Monkeyrotica-themed gewgaws, gimcracks, glass bongs, french ticklers, Fisher Price Viewmaster® disks of U Street before whitey took it all over, and even reproduction menus from the much missed Junkpunchers: An American Brasserie. Now you and your family can relive the past that never was while being womped in the nutsack.
U St is ready for monkey poop coffee
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kopi_Luwak
Your comment submission failed for the following reasons: Registration is required.
That's what my girlfriend said.
Coffee (ok, coffee related pastries and foodstuffs) is my one vice in these tough economic times. I think we're well past coffeepocalypse here. Starbucks across the street does not compare to a good tuscan sandwich.
No banks! There are way too many downtown near where most of us work. My vote is for a true bakery.
Speaking of pastries, they need to open another Vaccaro's Pastry Shop. Screw this foo-foo coffee nonsense. We need more sweet-ass cannolis, gelatis, and napoleons. Once a year I'd buy a Vaccaro's eclair. Sumbitch was the size of a goddamned football. Really obscene; I didn't know whether to eat it or f**k it. Then I said, "Why choose?"
*golf clap* I nominate this one for the wild world of monkeyrotica entry in What You Say?
why choose, indeed!
The owner already turned over the CH Mocha Hut location to other operators last month, so I can't say this is much of a surprise. I posted a comment about this change on Sunday with the list of best brunch places, and y'all thought I was nuts.
Chockful of nuts!
That would seem to make the rising rent theory a little less likely. Maybe the owner just wanted out? I hadn't seen any notice about the u street mocha hut, and I didn't know you were referring to CH. I guess we all tend to think of our local version as 'the one'.
This place was doomed to fail. I've stood there for 10 minutes before, waiting for them to hand me a cup so that I could pour my own coffee. God help you if you ordered your bagel toasted.
The coffee shop is dead. Long live the coffee shop.
ROFLMAO. You guys (you know who you are) never fail to deliver...and this is one of the best.
I thought the food there was always good. But I must say, the coffee sucked. Their espresso drinks were served way too hot, to the point that their flavors were reduced.
The service at MH was terrible. Some days they opened on time, other days they didn't. Some nights the kitchen closed at, some nights it closed at 7. The wait for food was always quite long.
Their espresso drinks were served way too hot, to the point that their flavors were reduced.
WTF is up with coffee places that refuse to cool off their espressos?
IMHO, I think this is good news. I've been to Mocha Hut on a number of occasions and was not only disappointed by their customer service, but also the quality of their coffee.
I randomly met the some of new owners/managers drinking at Stoney's on P St the other night. They're working on creating a small local chain, with the first cafe up in Columbia Heights in the Target zone. They said the idea for the coffee shops is to be a place where one can also lounge, a couches & fireplace kind of coffee shop with a small food & liquor menu. They seemed nice and have run restaurants in the Northeast (Conn. & RI) previously. Hopefully it will be an improvement.
That's a great idea. The McDonalds at the Verizon Center should put couches, rugs, and a fireplace out in front of their sidewalk. That way the teenagers wouldn't be loitering, they'd be loungeing.
That may be a little too high class for them. Maybe just a bunch of back seats from cars.
That would lower their self esteem! Anything less than smoking jackets, elephant footstools, red felt fezzes, and meerschaum pipes filled with PCP would constitute child abuse.
Fewer trysts and more big bears, please.
Spoken like someone who's never had a "tryst" with a "big bear" in "quotes."
I used to go to Mocha Hut when I lived in the area, but since moving to the H St., NE area, I've become in love with Sova Espresso for my daily caffeine fix. They have the best espresso I've ever had. And it's much more comfortable with tons of space to work.