After Sparky's Espresso Cafe closed in the summer of 2007, its neighbors on 14th Street mourned: Sparky's had toasted bagels and brewed coffee for weekend-morning crowds for years, and like Cafe Saint-Ex and Busboys and Poets, it was a symbol of the street's renaissance after decades of blight.

Mid City Caffe, which opened in an upper-level space Aug. 15, is filling the Sparky's void and then some. It serves drinks made with beans from cult North Carolina roaster Counter Culture Coffee, along with two house-made flavoring syrups (vanilla, made with sugar steeped with real vanilla bean; and a Nutella-based chocolate syrup for mochas and the like). An assortment of old-fashioned cakes (lime chiffon, spice) is as hunger-inducing as a Wayne Thiebaud painting.

But here's the thing: Mid City serves its coffee in a way that will require a little adjustment for those accustomed to Starbucks.

There is, for example, no coffeemaker here. Order a regular ol' coffee and you get two options: French press or pour-over. Either way, your beans are ground to order and then drenched in hot water just long enough to summon a strong, soul-warming cup of joe. If you order an espresso, macchiato or cappuccino for the road, one of Mid City's baristas will tell you -- sympathetically but firmly -- they just can't do it.

"If you took an espresso to go, it'd be cold by the time you got to the bottom of the stairs," says owner Mick Mier. But don't take it as attitude; this is a cafe that implores you stay, sip, slow down -- this is a cafe with a "Stay Awhile" menu.

"I'm really excited. We needed an independent coffee shop in the neighborhood -- good music, good vibe," says Leah Wu, who was lingering over a newspaper and a glass of iced tea on a recent Sunday afternoon. "It's not Starbucks, which I appreciate. I know somebody local owns it, somebody put a lot of thought into it, and it's one of a kind."

-- Lavanya Ramanathan (September 11, 2009)