Review - Elixr

207 S. 15th Street (around Walnut Street)
Website, Twitter, Yelp, Google Maps
M - F: 6 am - 10 pm, S - S: 7 am - 10 pm
Free but terrible Wi-Fi, few tables (fairly crowded), few outlets

Elixr

I was very excited to hear about the opening of a new café in the heart of Center City.  Elixr, which just opened a few weeks ago, prides itself in being true adherents to coffee made "the right way. "  Evan Inatome, the owner of of Elixr, is the brother-in-law of Eagles player Winston Justice. In fact, Inatome claims to donate 20% of all proceeds from Elixr to various charities he's working on with Justice.


Elixr clearly takes great pride in its coffee, so let's talk about that first.  All their coffee is "direct trade," which is a form of "fair trade" coffee  As I'm sure you know, fair trade coffee is all the rage these days especially among certain groups. "Direct trade" is a bit different because direct trade aims to get the coffee directly from the farmers.  I believe their coffee supplier is PT's Coffee. Their coffee may seem a bit on the expensive side ($2.25), but it's definitely worth it.  Elixr will brew-to-order among the 4 brews available that day.  Quite impressively, the baristas will hand-brew each order.  And you know they're doing it the right way - they'll place the cup on a scale and watch as they pour the hot water over the coffee, to ensure they use the exact optimal amount of water.  They're espresso offerings are also quite impressive as they use a La Marzocco espresso machine, widely regarded as the one of the best espresso machine.  When I visited, I tried their Brazilian brew, which had a round body, sweet acidity, and roasted peanut aroma.  As you would expect, it was brewed perfectly.   The baristas are quite friendly and willing to answer all questions.  However, I did notice that because the café is quite popular and crowded, the baristas somewhat rush you.  I have to give them credit though.   Considering the fact that they hand-brew each order, they're as efficient as once could be.  In case you're interested, they also have a number of other hot and cold drinks (including bottled Coca-Cola) and and sandwiches from Marathon Grill.


The atmosphere is fairly pleasant.  It takes on a post-modern approach - very simplistic, clean, yet elegant and sophisticated.  The café is well-lit and has great decor.  However, perhaps the appeal of the café is it's own downfall.  The café is very crowded, perhaps bolstered by the fact that it has limited seating.  It boasts 2 big "picnic tables," 6 seats the counter-top and 2 smaller comfortable chairs.  While there are a fair number of power outlets dispersed among the café, it's probably impossible to find a seat to study unless you come early and just "camp-out" all day.  Moreover, because of its popularity and over-crowdedness, the café feels less and less like a local independent coffee-shop, but instead more and more like a well-run and well-oiled chain café.    Even if you are able to secure a study spot, I wouldn't recommend it.  The café itself is quite small and the the noise within the café doesn't disperse very well as a white background noise (which I personally find very conducive to studying).  Rather, it sounds like a busy marketplace....moreover, if you plan on doing any work online, you'll probably run into significant problems trying to connect to its free Wi-Fi.  It t...ook me about 10 minutes to finally connect, only to find that the internet was extremely slow (1.46 mbps, which is about the speed of a 3G internet connection).  It might be be worth it to try to connect to Max Brenner's Wi-Fi...Another complaint I have is their rather poor climate control.  Every time the door opens, a huge cold draft rushes in, chilling the entire café.  If you're lucky enough to be a woman, apparently their bathroom also has lotion, which is a nice gesture.  I'm very disappointed however, that they would assume that men wouldn't want the same luxury!


Bottom-line - they are clearly coffee experts.  If you consider yourself to be a coffee snob, this is probably one of the few places in Center City where you can find this level of quality.  The ambiance has potential to be amazing.  But until they fix their over-crowding and internet problem, I wouldn't recommend studying there.   On the other hand, this is probably the only café I know in the city that opens until 10 pm...  I give it 4.5/5 "beans" (with huge potential for upward mobility).  Go check it out and let me know your thoughts!


***Update - for an excellent explanation of the "pour-over" method of brewing coffee, which is used by Elixr, please refer to this article.