UBC October 2026 - Coffee Shop Challenge

The official assignment sounded simple enough:

You decided to do a book crawl this summer. Instead of a traditional bar crawl.

Here’s how it works:

Map out three coffee shops you’ve been wanting to try, order a treat/drink at each and read 25 pages of your book at each location. For even more fun, bring a friend along for the ride.

Well. Summer is over, and I don't even pretend to read books anymore. So I decided to tweak the challenge slightly:

• Three coffee shops.
• Instead of reading 25 pages at each, I will write a post for UBC October.
• And since I'm going to all these coffee shops anyway, I might as well review them. Nothing too scientific, just the things I actually notice when I sit down for coffee: the surroundings, the food, the coffee, the music, the Wi-Fi, the price, and, because this is Switzerland, whether I can actually communicate with the person serving me in a language I speak.

So here goes: my completely unofficial coffee-shop review system.

Kafi im griänä Hüüs, or "Coffee in the Park":

Kafi im griänä Hüüs is the local-dialect version of “café in the green house.” The name does not refer to the greenhouse as you know it, but to the exterior of the parent building, which is painted a rather lovely linden green. The actual coffee shop is in a wooden annex.

The café is in Altdorf, the capital of Uri, one of Switzerland’s three founding cantons, alongside Schwyz and Unterwalden. We went there for a day trip. Below you can see the William Tell Monument.

And it turned out to be a very promising start.

• 🇨🇭 Barista: Swiss German with charming local dialect 🎉
• 🪵 Interior: wooden 💚
• 🌳 Outdoor patio: an actual park with old, tall trees 💚💚
• 🍪 Pastry: chocolate-chip cookie — sadly, it did not quite live up to its name 😢
• ☕ Espresso: excellent 💚
• 🎵 Music: soft pop 💚
• 📶 Wi-Fi: none
• 🔐 Password security: N/A. No Wi-Fi, no crime 😂
• 💰 Pricing: moderate enough to be completely unremarkable, which in this case is a compliment

Nothing surprising about the language here. This is Uri. I expect to be served in Swiss German in Uri.

Which brings me to Zürich.

Next up: an urban destination — Boréal

From a charming wooden annex in a park in Altdorf to Zürich, because apparently my book crawl needed some geographical range.

Boréal is much more urban: definitely a city coffee shop, although the interior still has enough wood to give it some warmth.

• 🇨🇭 Barista: Swiss German 🎉
• 🪵 Interior: urban / wooden 💚
• 🌳 Outdoor patio: on the sidewalk, overlooking a tram stop and a street that fortunately isn't as busy as some others
• 🍪 Pastry: cinnamon roll: not the best, but not the worst. Bonus points for warming it up for me 🧡
• ☕ Espresso: not my taste 😢
  They clearly take their coffee seriously, though. The coffee is brewed using a piston-driven machine, and they roast their own coffee at one of their Geneva locations. Apparently my taste buds just didn't get the memo.
• 🎵 Music: lounge-y at first, but apparently the playlist has ambitions. We have now progressed to Dr. Dre and Eminem's Forgot About Dre. Hip-hop/rap. Make of that what you will, it's defo not the relaxing coffeehouse vibes I was hoping for
• 📶 Wi-Fi: working 💚
• 🔐 Password security: poor 🤡
  The password was “goodcoffee.” So not only was the internet security questionable, they were also making claims I personally could not confirm.
• 💰 Pricing: reasonable, considering this is Zürich

And this is where the Swiss-German-speaking barista suddenly became a major bonus point.

Not because I was surprised that someone in Switzerland speaks Swiss German. But because this is Zurich, one of Switzerland's most international cities, where it is increasingly common to walk into a café, or any gastronomy or retail store for that matter, and find that English is the default language for customer service.

I have absolutely nothing against that. Zurich is international, and English is often the practical common language between people from different backgrounds.

But I'm Swiss. I live in Switzerland. Swiss German is my first language. And there is something wonderfully uncomplicated about walking up to a counter in my own country and being able to conduct the entire interaction in my own language.

No translating. No switching languages. No figuring out which language the person understands.

So yes, the Swiss-German-speaking barista gets a bonus point in Zurich.

Poushe & Starbucks: Cinnamon Roll, Bookstore, and Finally… Music 🎵

My third coffee-shop stop turned into a two-for-one review: Poushe, the year-round cinnamon-roll pop-up in front of Globus, and the Starbucks inside Orell Füssli, Switzerland’s closest equivalent to Barnes & Noble.

I bought the cinnamon roll at Poushe, but I did not take it into Starbucks and eat it there. Obviously, I am not one of those people who bring “foreign” food into a coffee shop. The cinnamon roll was for the next day, October 4, National Cinnamon Roll Day, and shared it with Colin at home. I merely used Starbucks as the location for my espresso and the next instalment of my highly scientific coffee-shop investigation.

🌍 Barista: Both were very much in the “English, please” category. 

🪵 Interior: The usual Starbucks standard, with a healthy amount of leather armchairs. 💚
And because this particular Starbucks is inside a bookstore, it gets bonus points for being surrounded by books. Even if I don't read them.

🌳 Outdoor seating: A few wooden benches outside, where you can sit and eat your “to-go” cinnamon roll. Not exactly a park with towering old trees, but at least you can sit outside. At SBUX the usual outdoor seating.

🍪 Pastry: The Poushe cinnamon roll is gigantic in size, in flavour, and, naturally, in price. At Starbucks, however, I have a grievance. More than a year ago they changed their iconic cinnamon roll, and I still don't like the new one. Some things simply shouldn't be messed with.

☕ Espresso: I didn't buy one at Poushe. At Starbucks, I ordered my usual espresso. It's my go-to when I'm out, although, given the choice, I'd rather make my own French press with coarsely ground whole beans at home.

🎵 Music: Ahhhh. Finally. Some easy-going background music from an artist who can actually sing and play an instrument. 💚 

📶 Wi-Fi: Technically working. In practice, not so much. I had to reconnect several times, and it seems to be set up with fairly tight limits. I tried to sync the dozen photos I'd taken for this very important scientific investigation, and… nope. They wouldn't go.

🔐 Password security: Just the regular public in-store internet access. 

💰 Pricing: The Poushe cinnamon roll is CHF 10.50, and remember, this thing is genuinely XXL. The Starbucks espresso is CHF 5.20. So, between the two of them, we're at CHF 15.70 = roughly US$19. 

What started as a simple book-crawl challenge has turned into a coffee shop rabbit hole. I have opinions about espresso and cinnamon rolls. I apparently have opinions about music. I am now judging Wi-Fi password security. And, unexpectedly, I have discovered that being served in Swiss German is a significant quality-of-life feature in Zürich.

Where would you prefer to have your coffee? What are your criteria to choose the place?