Where Everybody Knows Your Name. I have been going to Sitwell's for almost six years now, & there is no place like it in the city. It's a real, European style coffeehouse like you will find on any cute little Rue de Whatever in Paris. You can get coffee drinks, beer, wine, booze, & order food off the small, eclectic menu.
The food I've had is good-I like the Briemato Sandwich on croissant, the NY egg sandwich, the Sunday-only Belgian waffle w/toppings, & the gouda-avocado melt. If you order a cognac, often Lisa (the owner) will warm it for you to release its other flavors. They offer vegan baked goods & also breads made by local bakers.
The music on the stereo is conducive to conversation & working, & many evenings the cafe features local & touring bands & singer/songwriters for your listening pleasure. I don't always love the music, but I like that there is almost always something going on at Sitwell's.
Clearly, locals appreciate what Sitwell's has to offer, too. It's often busy, but I can either find an empty table or share one because someone invites me to sit down. I've spent afternoons there watching people move through, chatting, laughing, and sometimes shouting across tables to others. The library it aint, but then neither is that cafe in Paris that we all find so charming.
I find some of the vitriolic reviewers here to be inappropriate, dwelling far too much on their opinion of the owner & too little on the place & its menu & service. Not once in 6 years have I seen a cockroach at Sitwell's, & while it doesn't have the kind of antiseptic/streamlined ambiances of corporatized coffee places to be found everywhere, I would not say Sitwell's is dirty or unsanitary or anything else. Cluttered, maybe, but that's the aesthetic at Sitwell's. I think of it as "Art Decoco".
Being a 6-year patron of Sitwell's, here's what I think to be its biggest weakness: the plain old coffee. The lattes? Love them, every bit as good as Coffee Emporium's (my favorite latte in town). The decaf is top drawer. But every time I order a house coffee I can barely drink it. I don't know why it tastes so bad to me, but it does. Since I love the lattes, I just order those, or a decaf.
The staff have always seemed friendly to me, whether or not the service is on the spot. No, the service is not always stellar. But, since it's a neighborhood kind of place, if I need something & no one comes to wait on me at my table, I just go up to the counter, ask for whatever I need, and I always get it. I did that at Paris cafes, too.
The hateful comments directed at the owner seem rather suspect to me, I have to say. Some of the "reviewers" seem to know a bit much about her business & relationships, enough that I wonder if at least some of them are not disgruntled former employees. I did notice for a couple of years or so that the owner seemed to be hiring people who perhaps did not have any service industry experience, and some of them never seemed to get the hang of it.
From a few things I heard here & there, it seemed that Lisa hired some people that needed a job and that she felt sorry for. If that is the case, her good deeds did not go unpunished! And as far as good deeds go, I know that for years Lisa ran a free neighborhood Thanksgiving potluck dinner at the old Sitwells, & that she also ran an ad hoc women's shelter out of her very own home. She has "walked the walk" in a way none of the below self-appointed judges would ever think of. Lisa is colorful & she is a voluble extrovert. Sometimes she is loud. Sometimes other people are loud, not to mention inappropriate, and they are ejected from Sitwells (as they should be). Sitwell's is a true neighborhood cultural treasure, run by people with real lives that are entwined pretty deeply with the diversity (& funkiness, with emphasis on _funk_) of the Cincinnati community. This is why this place is still going so strong after so many years. I say long live Sitwell's, plain & simple.
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