Wednesday, August 2nd

Denver, CO

I was in Denver last week for four days and had a chance to check out Novo Coffee. I went here four times and tried three different beverages so I'm feeling confident in this review.

Novo Coffee is located in the heart of downtown. If you're ever in town for a conference, as I was, you'll probably be near Novo. Anyway, other people noticed the amazing location as well because there were huge lines here in the morning before the conference and the poor coffee shop baristas had no idea about the conference until the second day. Then they were prepared.

The service: I thought the service was great when I had the female baristas but there was a male gentleman who helped me on two of my mornings and he just wasn't in the mood. I even tried asking him questions about the empanadas and he had no idea about them so it was kind of useless asking him anything. To his credit, though, maybe he was annoyed by the conference load? Not sure. But I didn't feel super welcome even though I brought business there every morning and even brought my colleague pals.

What's cool: they may their own syrups. I'm a huge fan of places like this. They make salted caramel, lavender, and vanilla. I tried the latter two and they were good. I have a coffee in my neighborhood that also makes their own lavender syrup, which is good, and tasted similar to Novo's syrup. I preferred the vanilla, though. My colleagues loved the lavender and I agree that t tastes pretty awesome and it was made very well, which is prolly why, being their seasonal syrup, they ran out on the last day of our trip. But I usually like vanilla or slight sweet in my latte. I like lavender once in a while, but it's not my go-to. 

They did take time to make some sort of latte art, even though it wasn't the clearest and I appreciated this because I didn't feel rushed :) 

Anyway, I think their lattes are good.  I liked the vanilla latte best but it was nothing special. After a while, my latte tasted bitter and sweet so it's not 100% up to par with taste. Same with my lavender latte. I'm betting the soy or regular milk lattes tasted much better. I also had their cold brew. I don't usually do cold brew but it was so hot outside and I wanted to try it. After trying it, I wish I stuck to my latte. The cold brew was ok.  

Overall, I'll come back to Novo next time I'm in town, but I'm also curious to try Ink! Or Little Owl. Something to look forward to next time I'm in town :)

Overall Rating: 4/5

lavender latte and almond lavender latte 

almond vanilla latte