About 10 minutes walking distance from the Rec Center is a tiny pocket of warmth that I’ve often settled into on the colder days of the school year. It’s a charming little coffee and tea café called Chocolatea.
From the outside, the place is unassuming and easily missed. It has a rectangular blue awning with the name of the café written in white on the side. The doorknob, shaped like the round handle of a drawer, is always a little hard to open. The walls are painted in a patchwork of yellow, blue, green and gray. The atmosphere is half-modern, half-Asian, but all-together homey and cozy. I always try to grab a spot on the colorful wave-shaped booths.
As someone with an obsession for Asian snacks, I’m not ashamed to admit that I squealed I saw that they had Pocky (cracker sticks dipped in chocolate or strawberry icing), High Chew (an Asian, chewier version of Starbursts) and Meiji Hello Panda (crackers shaped like pandas with chocolate filling inside). Plus, they happen to have my favorite melon flavor of Ramuné, a Japanese soda.
Despite the awesome snacks, what you really come for is the drinks. Drinks of the day are always displayed on a chalkboard right next to the register. They have a long menu of interestingly named iced drinks, lattes and hot chocolates. Out of the all the drinks that I have tried so far, my personal favorites have been the Nutty Irishman, the Hot Matcha Green Tea, the Lychee Iced Tea and the Strawberry Nutella Latte. The selection is always changing, as they offer special seasonal drinks.
If you prefer, more traditional teas, Chocolatea also has an impressive selection of White, Green, Herbal, Black, Chai, Oolong and Decafinated teas. These can be found listed in a separate menu next to the register.
Chocolatea also has an Asian-influenced food menu with several choices of sandwiches, salads and soups. Their breakfast is, in my opinion, the best part of their food menu. Unfortunately they don’t offer it all day — breakfast is between 8 a.m. and 11 a.m. on weekdays and between 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. on weekends. Also from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. on weekends is the special Weekend Brunch, a small selection of special dishes. Though Chocolatea is somewhat pricy and doesn’t take J-Cash, it does offer a 10 percent discount if you pay in cash.
But besides the great food and the crazy drink names, there’s also something about the atmosphere of Chocolatea that makes you instantly feel at home. The place pulls you in and keeps you coming back; in fact, I’ve been there every weekend since the first time I visited last month. It’s strange how, every time I go there, I’m filled with a nostalgia that makes me miss home even as I’m surrounded by the laughter and thoughtful company of new friends. Perhaps this is the reason why I keep returning: because this place merges, in some happy and wistful combination, my hesitant steps forward and my tentative glances behind as I begin to establish my new life here at Hopkins.
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