Bizzell Library Bookmark Cafe

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Coffee Around the OU Campus

Miss Mae is back for a review of the coffee shops around campus. Since the newest coffee shop on campus, Cup of Jones in the Fred Jones Jr Museum of Art, just opened this week, she hasn’t had a chance to visit. Hope to get an update from her soon.

Campus Coffee Shops

At the University of Oklahoma, there are a number of coffee shops both on and off campus that offer a morning pick-me-up to the students. No matter where you enter the campus, or where your class or other activity is located, you are never far from a caffeine fix. This is a comprehensive list of every place at and around the University of Oklahoma that sells coffee, whether that be their primary product or part of a larger menu.

Couch Restaurants: Sooner Sweet Shop – Couch Cafeteria has a number small restaurants within it and one of these is Sooner Sweet Shop, which primarily provides bakery style treats and a small selection of hand scooped ice creams. However, this is also the only place in Couch where you can get a coffee, both drip and espresso. This, like every other coffee option on the campus, is a branch of Starbucks, making it the cheapest Starbucks drink you will ever get, as it comes with the price of admission to the cafeteria. Though they do not offer most of the menu, or even iced drinks, it is a good place to get a mocha or hot chocolate on a snowy day. However, with the brewed coffee, the only creamer option is half and half. If you are not a fan of bitter brewed coffee, I recommend getting it somewhere else, or using one of the hot chocolate packets to sweeten it up.

Residential Colleges Dining Hall – The Residential Colleges Dining Hall, though it does not have an independent coffee shop within it, does offer drip coffee throughout the day. They often offer two flavors, regular and roasted hazelnut, with the roasted hazelnut having a pleasantly sweet taste. Like Couch, the options for cream and sugar are limited, with those limitations expanding even further due to the crimes of the Coffee Creamer Bandit, whose actions, though irrelevant to this review, caused all liquid creamer to be kept in a secure location and only available upon request. However, just like Couch, it is always an option to pour a hot chocolate packet into the cup if you need something a little sweeter.

The Hive – The Hive is the newest coffee shop on campus, having opened with the rest of the restaurants in Cross Village just a few years ago. It is a small, unofficial Starbucks with the theme of a beehive. The best thing about this place is its atmosphere. If I was asked to draw a picture of what a coffee shop would look like, this would most likely be my answer, with dim lighting and warm wood covering most of the walls and furniture. The coffee itself is good, as are the pastries and sandwiches that are also offered. It is one of the best managed places in Cross Village, so it is kept clean and the employees are kept orderly. The only thing that interrupts its atmosphere is the chaos of Basic Knead, which shares a building, as it tends to get very busy and very noisy, which makes it difficult to concentrate if you are studying or doing homework.

Bookmark – Bookmark is a small coffee shop nestled in the basement of the Bizzell Memorial Library. It is incredibly similar to The Hive in terms of its menu, as it is also an unofficial Starbucks, and therefore has many of the same products. It is the best managed restaurant on the entire campus and is kept very clean with very friendly employees. Just like The Hive, the best thing about this shop is the atmosphere, not just in its dining room, but in its entire location. There are seating options throughout the entire basement, with a dining room, an area with study pods and group study rooms, and long couches overlooking the gardens in the library courtyard, where there are regularly blooming flowers and baby ducks in a little pond. It is always a good place to stop and get some homework done before or in between classes. They also offer Cow on the Fly sandwiches, in which there is no bad flavor.

Starbucks – Despite the many other places that offer Starbucks products throughout campus, there is only one official Starbucks, and that is the one in the student union. At this location, they offer the entire menu, as well as a collection of cups and ground coffee bags, which can also be purchased with student meal points. It is a neat and tidy location, with the same warm atmosphere as The Hive. Although the seating is limited, getting there at the right time of day offers a quiet place to study, as well as having the dining room of The Union Market available for overflow if it gets busy. It is always a good end of the week treat on a Friday morning.

Einstein Brothers Bagel Company – Einstein Brothers Bagel Company is one of the best coffee shops on campus, the only one not sponsored by Starbucks, and the only one that is regularly open on weekends. Offering an assortment of bagel flavors, as well as cream cheese toppings, sandwich toppings, and wraps, it is always a good place to grab breakfast. Their coffee is good for any season, offering both hot and iced drinks, although their espresso machine is comparable to the ice cream machine at McDonald’s in its inconsistency. However, their chocolate cream cold brew is incredibly good, and is very sweet for cold brew. I would compare it more closely to chocolate milk with a lot of caffeine. I personally always enjoy a six-cheese bagel with onion and chive cream cheese, of which they provide plenty.

Haystack Coffee – Haystack Coffee is the only coffee shop on this list that is not on campus and does not accept student meal points or exchanges. It is a shop run by a local church but is so close to campus that it is only a brief ten-minute walk from most dorm buildings. Despite not being a campus specific spot, it is very friendly to students and every experience I have had there has been a good one. Their biggest flaw is an inconsistent menu. My favorite thing there, the cheddar roll, has not been available in a year, and my second favorite thing, the caramel apple pecan scone, has only been available on select days. Their baked goods are minimal, but are always good, especially after being warmed up. I also recommend any of their seasonal drinks.

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Food, Oklahoma, Oklahoma food

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Food Friday: The Bookmark Cafe

If you have been reading my blog for a while, you would know that my contributing writer Mae has been absent. Well, she had to get through a rigorous high school schedule and now that she has graduated (PC Pirate class of ’21) she is studying at the great University of Oklahoma (proud 3rd generation Sooner). To help pay for this new adventure in education, she is working for food services as a barista. Her first semester she spent at The Hive, a coffee shop on south campus (more on it in another post) but now she is at The Bookmark Cafe in the first lower level of Bizzell Memorial Library.

This is just a small coffee shop, very similar to the ones you see in bookstores, where they have coffee, lattes, frappuccinos, along with light sandwiches and pastries. Last Sunday was my first visit and I was impressed, the space that had once been where the newspapers and magazines were kept was transformed into a study lounge with separate rooms for groups. Bookmark Cafe has a large area with tables and booths for group or individual study. They are part of Starbucks “We Proudly Serve” program, where they do serve up the same drinks that you can find at a Starbucks. Many of the pastries are cooked on site with the salads and sandwiches coming from Cow On the Fly. I didn’t get a chance to try any of the food yet, because of the snowstorm the previous week, the food delivery hadn’t come in yet. The double chocolate chip frappuccino that I had was awesome though. The staff is all students, they were all friendly and happy to be at Bookmark.

Now for some history- there was nothing like this when I was a student at OU in the early 1990’s (BA in Journalism, ’94). The coffee shop craze hadn’t hit Oklahoma yet. I guess there were some around but to me, coffee was just something that my grandparents drank. I had never heard of a frappuchino, latte, or macchiato. Bizzell Memorial Library was built in 1928 for the growing university and expanded, first in 1958, then again in 1982. Lower level 1 is part of the 1982 addition. Like I mentioned earlier, it held the periodicals. I used to sit at the microfilm readers and journey through the past with their newspaper collection. The Bookmark Cafe officially opened for the spring semester 1998 to give students a quiet place to study. The official grand opening was held on February 11, 1998 (I didn’t know this information until Wednesday of this week as I was researching, so the fact I’m publishing this on the same date 24 years later is just a coincidence). In August of 2013 construction began to transform the space into the study area it is now, Bookmark Cafe was temporarily moved but returned to its now larger location in September 2014 with a ceremony held on November 7, 2014, to mark the reopening of the lower level. In March 2020, it closed, not to reopen until January 2022.

Overall I will give them 5 strips of bacon, just for the fact that my child works there, but I would like to try more of their menu items. Project for the rest of the semester. So if you find yourself in Norman and near campus, stop into the historic library and grab a treat.