What you smell at Chicago's Coffee & Tea Exchange
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Shoppers sniff around Coffee & Tea Exchange in Lakeview. Photo: Monica Eng/Axios
Welcome to the first installment of "Scents in the City," a guide to Chicago's most delightful free smells and what's driving them.
How it works: In each installment, I'll sniff around a fragrant local spot, then ask readers what I should smell next.
First spot: Coffee & Tea Exchange in Lakeview, a 51-year-old shop packed with barrels of roasted coffee beans and a wall of dried teas, along with spices, herbs and brewing paraphernalia.
The main scent: A sweet, warm, leathery mix of chocolate and raspberries that makes lingering in the line a joy.
The source: "I think it's a mix of the coffee we're brewing along with the berry teas in these jars," said sales clerk Eilish Morse-O'Rourke, pointing to a wall of colorful teas.
- Other scent sleuths directed me to a nearby shelf of chocolate raspberry coffee.
- But Morse-O'Rourke declared it was probably a combo of everything, along with decades of aromas from coffee, tea and herbs that steeped permanently into the walls of this fragrant Lakeview institution
I call this aroma: Choco-raspberry hug.
Tell me where I sniff next.