Konditori: My mid-morning Fika

The greatest thing about working in the building that I live in, is that coffee is only two floors away in my apartment all day!  But today, I ran out of coffee after cup #2 (I'm a 3 cup kinda girl).  Rather than being sensible and buying more coffee to make at home, I decided to take Reggie for a little walk around the corner and grab a cup somewhere.  It was a nice morning and he loves a good walk, about as much as I love a good cup of coffee.  So I decided to take a mid-morning fika (Swedish for coffee break) and head around the corner to Konditori (pastry based coffee shop).  Given that I am Swedish, this seemed like a natural inclination for me and it was!

Reggie and I squeezed into Konditori, and I do mean squeezed.  There were four other people in this tiny little shop and we practically had to go back outside when someone wanted more cream in their coffee.  The menu was that of a nice simple coffee shop - nothing crazy, no Lingonberry Lattes or Swedish Fish Macchiatos.  They had two sizes of coffee, liten (small) and stor (large).  No Viking size or anything ridiculous (I once ordered coffee from a place that had a size "disco" - please feel free to roll your eyes at this - and the barista made me say "disco" rather than "large"... ugh, I never went back and he's lucky he still has all his teeth.  Anyway, I digress...).  They had a lovely little assortment of pastries and some of them were traditionally Swedish.

I went with the Kanelbulle (traditional Swedish cinnamon roll), a Zucchini Carrot muffin, and a Swedish coffee.  The kanelbulle was nice, not as rich and gooey as it's American brethern, but the crunchy rock sugar on top was really good.  It was a little dry, but I love nothing more than dunking pastry in my coffee and then it became a special treat.  But the star of this show was the Zucchini Carrot muffin - crisp on the outside, light and fluffy on the inside.  It had the perfect amount of zucchini, carrots, walnuts, and zesty spices.  And on the crown, was a roasted peach... it may have been the best muffin I've ever had - and that's saying a lot because I generally find muffins to be underwhelming a waste of time.  Oh, and the coffee was good too!!

Now that I've reconnected with my people on more than Ikea and meatballs, I feel as though I'll be having fikas at Konditori more often!

Breakfast at Berkli Parc: The Day We Became Famous

I had promised my staff member, Nicole (no relation), that we would have a breakfast date this week.  She was positive that I was purposefully planning to do fun things with other staff members while she was busy.  I explained to her that this was because I secretly hate her, but she wasn't buying that.  So during our Friday morning meeting, we braved the bone chilling cold and ran over to Berkli Parc to grab some breakfast.

When we walked in, there were two women having a conversation/interview - love advice of some sort - and being filmed.  At first we were quiet and hesitant, waiting for them to politely ask us to leave or at least to be quiet.  Since neither of those things happened within the first 20 seconds that we were there, we went on with our loud and ridiculous conversation.

Their menu was intriguing!  They had all sorts of new and exciting coffee drinks that we had never heard of... The California Latte, Dirty Chai Latte, Strawberry Fields Latte, and so on.  The only problem was that none of these exciting drinks had any explanations as to what went into them.  This caused a chain reaction of numerous questions and side bars between Nicole and I about our feelings and thoughts on these drinks.

While we waited for our coffee, chai, and breakfast sandwiches, I had a lovely conversation with the restaurant's owner.  He too is a native Californian in fact, we're both originally from Sacramento. This is not something I usually tell people... that I was born in Sacto (and if you've ever been there, you'll know why - sorry Sacto peeps, I still love you).  However, we bonded..  He even honored a fictitious discount that Google Offers was spreading around about them.

Nicole got a Chai Latte, hold the Dirty (which we found out meant a shot of espresso and not an olive as I had initially suspected).  I got the Californian Latte (had to represent), that orange zest, cloves, and cinnamon, I believe.  It was zesty and lovely, and I appreciated the foam art.  Our sandwiches (or half sandwiches that were pretending to be whole sandwiches) were Bacon, Egg, and Sprout on Whole Grain.  Despite it really only being a half sandwich for $6, it was really tasty.  The egg was perfectly over easy and had a nice bit of runniness to it (or nature's gravy, as I like to call it) that pulled the entire sandwich together.  The earthiness of the sprouts was very clean and fresh - and nothing like baby trees, as I explained to Nicole.

Nicole's big break!

But really the highlight of the breakfast outing was that Nicole and I became famous.  Yes, that's right, we are now reality TV stars.  As we were waiting for the light to change outside the coffee shop, we heard a man yelling "Ladies, hey girls!" at us. Naturally, being New Yorkers, we assumed it was a crack head and completely ignored him.  To our surprise, it was actually one of the film crew from the coffee shop wanting us to sign a release for the show that we were just staring in.  It's a new "reality" TV show (although, we have serious doubts about how realistic it is) on MTV called "Girl, Get Your Mind Right."  I declined to be shown, since my agent wasn't there to broker this agreement, so my face will be blurred out.  However, Nicole will be staring in a full role.  We will be credited as the Two Annoyingly Loud Girls That Won't Shut Up.  So tune in to MTV in May and see our big premiere at breakfast.