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Posts tagged ‘OU coffee shop’

Food Friday: Haystack Coffee

We sent Miss Mae back to Norman for the spring semester last week but of course some of her books hadn’t arrived before she left. They showed up a few days later and on Saturday morning we decided to deliver them as well as take her out for breakfast at one of her many favorite places to enjoy a coffee, Haystack Coffee.

This small coffee shop is run by the OU Baptist Collegiate Ministry and is just southwest of the campus dorms. It was quiet on Saturday morning, just another small group was meeting there, so we just sat and enjoyed our coffee while conversing about the upcoming semester. All 3 of us thought the snowman latte sounded good. This special latte for winter has peppermint, maple, cinnamon, white chocolate, espresso, and whipped cream. It was different but good. Each sip you could just get a hint of each flavor, it was the perfect drink for the cool morning. We also had some cinnamon rolls made for Haystack by Buttercream Bakery. These came in small containers and could be heated, a nice sized roll with lots of buttercream icing topping it.

Haystack Coffee is a straight up coffee shop that was started in 2019. Even though it’s in the ministry building, the coffee shop is separate from the rest of the building. Even though it is near the campus, it is not part of OU. It’s right across the street to the south of the old Stubbeman Village and to the southwest of Adams Tower, both will be demolished soon. You will need to text your tag number to a verification service to prove you are a customer and not just parking there to go to a game or class. I give them 5 strips of bacon.

Address: 1203 Elm Ave., Norman.

Category:

Food, Norman, Oklahoma, Oklahoma food, University of Oklahoma

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Coffee Corner: Starbucks (OU Student Union)

Starbucks is a classic in the coffee shop community. With hundreds of stores across the country, they are dedicated to serving quality coffee to their customers and creating new and trendy products for them to try. I personally am a regular at the Starbucks in the OU Student Union. This store recently moved to a new, larger location, as their previous store was small and cramped, not good for all of the students waiting to order. Their new location is larger than any Starbucks I have personally ever been in, with carved wooden seats and glass walls giving a view into the primary hallway of the Student Union. My personal order is always the Crispy Grilled Cheese, which has a mix of cheeses on sourdough bread, topped with a layer of crispy baked cheese. My usual drink is a simple mocha, which is sweeter than any other coffee shop I have been to. I’m there so often they know my name and start preparing my order before I even get to the counter. They offer all of the typical items on the Starbucks menu, and their friendly staff is ready to serve whatever you are feeling that day. This is only a review for the Starbucks at the Student Union of the University of Oklahoma. Not all are the same and there are many locations to choose from now. Written by Mae.

Category:

Oklahoma, Oklahoma food, University of Oklahoma

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Coffee Corner: Einstein Bros. Bagel Company

Possibly one of my favorite coffee shops in the world is Einstein Bros Bagel Company. Years ago, the only way that I ever enjoyed Einstein Bros was from the few they sold at Target, usually the asiago flavor. I remember that my mom would buy one for each of us, and for dinner that night we would have bagel sandwiches, which I always enjoyed. When Target ceased to carry Einstein Bros, I had no way of enjoying them anymore. However, upon first visiting the location in Headington Hall at the University of Oklahoma, I immediately fell back in love. This became my regular Saturday morning breakfast, and my regular food item of choice is simple. The six-cheese bagel is rich and cheesy, crisp on the edges and melty in the middle, and is best when paired with onion and chive cream cheese (referred to on the menu as “shmear”). As far as coffee goes, I prefer either a cold brew shake or a hot mocha. A cold brew shake is similar to a Frappuchino, but due to being made with cold brew is more bitter and coffee flavored, but still much sweeter than straight cold brew. The mochas are similar to Starbucks, if a little less sweet.

Overall, I rate Einstein Bros Bagel Company 10/10. Written by Mae.

Address: 100 E Lindsey St., Norman; 6500 S MacArthur Blvd., Oklahoma City; 2660 E 21st. St., Tulsa; 440 s Gary Ave., Tulsa; 8125 E 101st. St., Tulsa; 7777E Apache St., Tulsa.

Category:

Food, Oklahoma, Oklahoma food

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Food Friday: The Hive

So I mentioned in my review of The Bookmark Cafe that my daughter, Mae, worked here on her first semester at OU. The Hive is a small cafe in a larger complex called Cross Village. In this same building is Acre Provisions, a grocery store just for college kids, and Basic Knead, a walk-up restaurant that serves pizza and pasta. All 3 spaces run together on the ground floor with apartment-like dorm rooms above.

The Hive is set up the same way The Bookmark Cafe is- they serve different coffee drinks along with light snacks. There is plenty of space to sit, not only indoors but in the outdoors area as well. They are also in Starbucks “We Proudly Serve” program, so you will get drinks like you find at Starbucks. You will also find students working here as well. All of the times we stopped by in the fall of 2021, we had great service and the drinks were always good. I will also give them 5 strips of bacon. They are located south of Lindsay Street on Asp in the Cross Village complex (southeast of the towers). Can’t really see it from the road, if you find Acre Provisions, it’s around the corner.

Now a bit of the history behind The Hive- Cross Village was opened in the fall of 2018. It was a new concept at OU, the dorm apartments were on the top floors while the ground level was just for restaurants, shops, and other businesses. This was originally to cater to upper-class students at OU. Cross Village is further south of the well-known dorm buildings Walker, Adams, and Couch, so the older students weren’t as close to the younger freshmen. Cross Village took the place of the original Cross Center, “The Men’s Quadrangle” dormitory built in 1952. Cross Center had fallen into disrepair and was mostly used as storage, so then a plan was developed in 2016 to replace the older buildings. Cross Village was supposed to be a public-private collaboration but by the end of the first full school year there were clear problems. Cross Village never filled to full occupancy with only 30 percent of the units rented out to students. With a legal dispute now on the horizon, all restaurants and shops were closed on July 30, 2019. Over the next two school years, there was plenty of legal wrangling and by May 2021 a new entity stepped up to help the university run Cross Village. To get the occupancy up, freshmen were now allowed to move into the new complex. After a two-year absence, all restaurants and shops were able to reopen. The Hive has stayed busy throughout this time, catering to students who live on campus. (If you want a full run down on all the legal and financial information, just Google it. I could write a book with all that went down in the building of Cross Village.)

Category:

Food, Norman, Oklahoma, Oklahoma food, University of Oklahoma

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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.

Advertisement in the OU Daily February 11, 1998.

Category:

Food, National Register of Historic Places, Norman, Oklahoma, Oklahoma food, Oklahoma history, University of Oklahoma

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