Barnie's CoffeeKitchen Opens on Park Avenue

Details: Published on Wednesday, 09 November 2011 11:09; Written by Scott Joseph

Barnies_Kitchen Barnie’s CoffeeKitchen opened the first of its new shops this week on Park Avenue in Winter Park in the space it had occupied under the old name, Barnie’s Coffee & Tea. Coffee is still a main focus, so is tea, but there also are new breakfast and lunch menus with more ambitious food items than the basic muffin or croissant. Hence the CoffeeKitchen designation.

You realize, don’t you, that there are people whose only job is to sit in a room and come up with names like CoffeeKitchen? Very specifically, no spaces. I wonder if they thought taking out that space would save one of the 140 characters in a tweet. I wonder if anyone suggested KoffeeKitchen, and whether that person still has a job. I wonder why presenting CoffeeKitchen as one word annoys me so much.

But I digress. The new place features a state of the art CoffeeRoaster, where beans can be roasted in big batches. You’ll find the roasted beans on the CoffeeShelves in the newly rebranded CoffeeBags. The old kelly green Barnie’s Coffee & Tea packaging has been replaced by brown, green (more of a forest green) and red bags that are meant to reflect moods: brown for comfort, green for intrigue and red for robust. My usual morning coffee comes in blue packaging that I’ve always associated with disorientation. Coffees ordered to sip in the shop may be prepared fresh using Barnie’s new handcrafted pour-over filter drip system.

The new shop design eschews the now stereotypical seating of sofas and overstuffed chairs and continues the theme with wooden CoffeeKitchenTables. At a grand opening event for media Tuesday, Barnie’s president and CEO, Jonathan Smiga, said the seating arrangements are meant to reflect the sort of in-kitchen seating you might have in your own home where, to use one of his examples, you might gather to discuss your new divorce. I’m not sure if you want to go with brown for comfort or green for intrigue in that case. Could we rebrand the red package for rage? In any event, there isn’t a lot of seating (maybe that’s why they took out the space in the name!), so if your particular family crisis involves a lot of people, you may want to take it outside. The design has an old-timey homeyness to it, but it’s modern enough to offer free wi-fi (in case you want to Google the person your spouse is canoodling with).

As I said, the menus are more ambitious, featuring breakfast items such as corned beef hash with eggs or various frittatas (frittati?) and at lunch (actually, it’s called the afternoon menu) there are soups, salads, dips, tartines and sandwiches. Desserts, too. Many of the ingredients are locally sourced, which is a nice touch. I’ll have a review of the food later on.

This is the first Barnie’s to be CoffeeKitchened. The Baldwin Park location and a new one in downtown Orlando in the CityArts (oh, for crying out loud -- we’re not running out of spaces; just stop it) Factory will be converted in the first quarter of next year. Others to follow.

You can check out the new Barnie’s CoffeeKitchen at 118 Park Ave. S., Winter Park. Open for breakfast, lunch and dinner. Phone number is 407-629-0042.

The new packaging is meant to reflect any mood, as long as it's comfort, intrique or robust.

Seating is at kitchen tables.

Barnie's CoffeeKitchens will feature pour-over filter systems for fresh-brewed coffee.

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