List Five: Great Places to Get a Cup of Coffee

It's harder than you might think to find a good cup of coffee. I mean, straight-up, regular old coffee-flavored coffee. There are plenty of places to get your coffee drowned in milk or laced with sugary syrups, but finding a decent cup of black coffee can seem impossible if you don't know where to look. This list contains five places where you can enjoy coffee without having to cover it up with vanilla beans, chocolate, or hazelnut.

The Soma Center, 609 Lake Ave., Lake Worth. 561-296-9949
All Soma food is organic, and that goes for the coffee as well. The café is open at 7 a.m. Monday through Friday, leaving plenty of time to grab a cup of coffee on the way to work, and it stays open until at least 10 p.m. for those people working on a deadline and needing a burst of caffeine to get through the night.

Brew Urban Café, 209 SW Second Ave., Fort Lauderdale. 954-523-7191 and 638 N. Federal Hwy., Fort Lauderdale. 954-527-4828.

Brew Urban Café's website claims "real coffee isn't a product of giant corporations but is a result of caring growers, skilled roasters and well-trained baristas." It's hard to argue that point, (except the baristas part, as the coffee we're looking for just needs to be poured from a pot to a cup), and it's even harder not to fall for Brew. The location on SW Second is a bare-bones coffeehouse, dotted with art and comfortable chairs to sip your coffee, wine, or imported beer. The house-special coffee is perpetually brewed and doesn't need a lick of sugar or milk. It's medium to dark roasted with a satisfying bite.

Undergrounds Coffeehaus, 2743 E. Oakland Park Blvd., Fort Lauderdale. 954-630-1900

It seems the coffee gets buried at Undergrounds. With so much other stuff going on (movies, board games, wifi, spoken word) in this quaint shop, it's easy to forget that their plain old coffee is some of the best around. Sure you can get hundreds of flavored coffees, iced hot chocolates, and espressos, but the coffee-flavored coffee is topnotch. It's light to medium roasted, bitter enough to pucker your lips, and able to wake you up with the flavor long before the caffeine kicks in.

Megabite Cyber Café 1901B Hollywood Blvd., Hollywood. 954-237-2888.

Admittedly my first trip to Megabite Cyber Café wasn't because I was looking for a cup of coffee. I was attracted to checking out their Bubble Tea (think drinking tea mixed with tapioca pudding). They recently moved to new digs along Hollywood Boulevard, and they brought the Bubble Tea with them, along with a fine selection of coffee and beer. If you can fight off the bubble tea bug/curiosity, a cup of their straight-up brew tastes like it's been presweetened. It's a deep roast with almost a complete lack of bitterness and smooth, sweet aftertaste.

Dunkin' Donuts, Locations everywhere.
 
Yeah Dunkin' Donuts. Say what you will about their doughnuts, the service, or the atmosphere, but there's no denying the magnificence of their coffee. The convenience factor also helps out quite a bit, knowing you can find a DD at almost any major intersection. Buy a box of coffee for the office, or pick up the beans at your local grocer and it all tastes the same: delicious. It's medium-roasted and smooth, with not a hint of the bitterness that plagues that Seattle-based chain's shops.