Cafe Luli, Stevenson, Maryland

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Cafe Luli, Stevenson, Maryland

04 Sep

Beep. Beep. Beep. That’s the sound I heard about a week and a half ago outside my window at 6:53 AM, heralding the beginning of a construction project. A new set of sidewalks is being installed across from our house. As of the time of this writing, the worst of the drilling appears to be over…for now. Bear in mind that two weeks ago, Fort Indiantown Gap did live fire exercises for a few days at a time. They didn’t start their work until 8:00 AM, so it wouldn’t disturb people. Just some food for thought.

Thankfully, the people doing the cement pouring were kind enough to delay making noise as long as possible, even though their work order apparently required them to be there shortly after 6:00 AM. It’s also not every day, which is a blessing (or perhaps an act of mercy on their part). We still don’t know how long it will take to finish the project, and I’m left stewing over the fact that the one place I go to hide from the rest of the world is under siege by it. That’s a bad feeling. I needed a good feeling.

That good feeling came when I ran off to Maryland. It was warm. It was Saturday, and on Labor Day weekend, no less. The morning had been blissfully silent. One issue: My car was low on oil. I didn’t let it dissuade me. I jetted off to the nearest auto body shop, grabbed some 5W-30 oil, and set off down Interstate 83 towards Baltimore. I’m glad I did.

OK, I wasn’t actually going to Baltimore. I’ve been doing a coffee tour of suburban Baltimore and the surrounding countryside. If you remember, we’d just visited outer Towson when a local coffeehouse interrupted the process by springing up east of Harrisburg. Google Maps revealed something I hadn’t noticed before: a small, very French-looking cafe sitting in the countryside north of Pikesville (a suburb of Baltimore known for its Jewish community and endless lunch spots).

Info about Cafe Luli is scant and contradictory online. One page says they’re coming soon; another says they’re already here, and the social media sites haven’t been updated in a spell. There was no phone number, either. I was concerned that once again, a promising cafe had opened and closed before it could gain a following. As a matter of fact, I had a contingency coffeehouse standing by on my itinerary in case this one no longer existed. We’ll get to that later.

Cafe Luli does exist. It exists, and it exceeded expectations. It’s located in a plaza, and I’ve had mixed experiences with coffeehouses in plazas. They tend to be commercialized more often than not, and the traffic absolutely obliterates the coziness one expects from a coffeehouse. That wasn’t a problem here because Cafe Luli is nestled in a little alcove near a golf course, separated from the Baltimore beltway by a few dense little woodlands and more than a few upper-class residences.

I couldn’t find a town of Stevenson, per se. It was more of a collection of homes. It is home to Stevenson University. It was once known as Villa Julie College. I had received a letter from them once, back when I was just about to graduate high school, and the brochures started coming in. There was no time to visit. The coffeehouse was going to close at 3 PM, and it was already 2:15.

The cafe looks super European. I love that. I like homages to Old World culture. There’s a little restaurant in Harrisburg called Au Bon Lieu that replicates a Parisian cafe. Cafe Luli does the same. It doesn’t go overboard, though. There are nods to France, but with a minimum of kitsch. The relative smallness of the space is more than made up for with a lovely, intimate set of tables in a second-floor area. Even here, the decor is minimal. The accoutrements you see in the photos below were on the bathroom and stairwell walls.

The coffee hailed from an unexpected locale: Austria. Julius Meinl is the name, and it’s been in operation since the mid-19th century. Now, that’s provenance! At that point, I was grinning with victory over the fact that this place turned out to be open despite all odds. It’s not just open; it’s thriving. I asked for the closest thing to a typical house blend. What I received was hard to place. Oh, it was expertly crafted, of that there’s no doubt. This roaster is no fly-by-night operation. What I mean is that the blend was so…blended that it was hard to tell where the beans might have originated. There was a mild earthiness and chocolate-ish hints, but they were something of a background. A slight leguminous quality was also there. The real kicker was the light whisper of citrus on the end, which wasn’t enough to connote an African origin for some of the beans, only to tease a vague possibility. I’d bet there’s Sumatran DNA in this roast. The robust body alone speaks to it. The coffee was called Danube Delight, but beyond that, the contents were a mystery.

I spoke to a rather brilliant coffee lover on the staff (I believe her name is Kay, but I’m horrible with hearing names, remembering names, remembering faces, or recalling general short-term and long-term events). She and I kibitzed about the flavor of this particular roast for a while. We both agreed that it would be wonderful to taste European-grown coffee and lamented the impossibility of growing beans in Europe. We also concurred that our ‘medium dark’ is ‘dark’ to most other people. Coffee aficionados (meaning the coffee-obsessed, if we’re being honest) tend to think alike.

Cafe Luli was not the end of the Old World charm present in this plaza! There was a wine shop called The French Paradox right next door. They were having a tasting that afternoon. Having gotten my uppers, I resolved to partake of some downers and sampled five Rhone wines. After letting the wine wind its way through the old liver, I departed for my next stop: the backup coffeehouse. That exceeded my assumptions as well, despite its location in a (you guessed it) plaza.

It’s interesting, isn’t it? We’ve seen many instances of a coffeehouse in a rural or quasi-rural setting adopting a modernistic aesthetic while leaning into rural customs and cultural conceits. At Cafe Luli, the opposite is happening. Here, we see an extrusion of something quintessentially urban into the fringe. In our society, all things French have long been a code for sophistication. I’d say the association is well-deserved. Austria deserves it, too. I’ve spoken at length regarding the Enlightenment and the debt it owes to coffeehouse culture. Paris and Vienna were hotbeds of a cosmopolitan worldview that would help evolve the collective consciousness of humanity. Those heady philosophies were digested and debated around mugs of coffee. Revolutions were brewing. A bit of that heritage now sits across the road from the first rolling farms of the rural Maryland countryside.

Oh, and I learned something else: This cafe has only been around for a short time. It was planted just after Easter. It’s less than a year old. That’s a stark reminder of how unstoppable coffeehouse culture is. Our troubles may change. Our needs remain the same. For a lot of us, one of those needs is an exceptional cup of coffee.

Until next time, stay caffeinated!