Casbah Café – CLOSED
$$ Coffee & Tea
3900 W Sunset Blvd
Los Angeles, CA 90029
I really detest this place. The decor is annoying and the drinks are pricey but taste like cheap instant versions of the drinks that they’re supposed to be.
Looks:
2/5
The decor has a washed-out pastel-like motif of what North Africa is supposed to look like. The colors are horrendous and the furniture constitutes mismatched cheap or tattered tables/shelves to hold other things on, primarily their store items. Their store items are so random and out of place and look like a bunch of colorful stuff from a swap meet gloriously thrown on a table for everyone waiting to go to the bathroom to shrug at while waiting to go to the bathroom. The crevices and scratches in the concrete are black and dirty. The high ceiling probably saves this place from smelling musty. A possible one extra star, but I decided against it. The wobbly lightweight metal outdoor tables have very poor balance underneath their dying vine caves on the slant of a hill going upwards.
Drinks:
1/5
For the area, I’m surprised they can get away with serving the poor drinks that they do. I’d expect poor quality drinks in a gas station town, not Silver Lake.
The chai constitutes an overly sweet instant chai powder and is about a dollar more expensive than the price listed on the wall, which I asked about. I guess the disparity of price is part of the disorganized motif. The sweet powdered chai with heated milk is about the same price as a freshly brewed chai at Intelligentsia next door.
The iced coffee is so incredibly bad, I couldn’t drink it. Given the benefit of the doubt that this isn’t brewed Folger’s instant coffee, the coffee has an aftertaste as if the grind is stale or lackluster. It was incredibly hard to drink. I tried even drinking and swallowing this drink really fast to not let the aftertaste attack my taste buds like they were. I left most of the drink behind which I rarely do.
Overall, I hate this place. I hate it being located in an area I pass by all the time. Please close down, please close down!
Useful: 4 Funny: 2 Cool: 1
8/23/2012