It’s an epic argument. You are demanding a good cup of coffee. Your companion wants to go to a place with good tea.



It’s a good thing that we have a wonderful little tea shop just down the street from the best coffee in town. The solution to your dilemma is to send your friend to Summerhouse Tea and Trading and to go to Winnings Coffee.

Summerhouse Tea and Trading is a small tea shop on Harvard with a huge selection of teas. They have a variety of black teas from different areas (flavored and not) as well as green teas and rooibos. All of them are in glass containers so you can see the leaves and you can smell them to see if they’re what you’re looking for. Your friend can get a cup of tea to for $1.75 or buy loose leaves, which are sold by the ounce.



If you’re interested in browsing, Summerhouse has a large selection of teapots, tea cozies as well as other merchandise, including jewelry (the “trading” part). She also has those little sticks with the crystallized sugar on the end (you know, the kind they seem to always sell in the gift shops of national parks), so you can bribe children to accompany you with those.



Winnings, on the other hand, is a coffee shop closer to Central but only a few yards away from Summerhouse. They roast their coffee there and have a wide variety of different blends to try. It’s one of the few places I go where I actually get coffee and as a result I’m a bit spoiled—I usually drink fake coffees (you know, mocha and the like) at other places because the drip coffee is never up to my standards.



Winnings also sells coffee by the (rather expensive) pound as well as a small selection of cookies, sweet breads, and other sweets. They also have food (meal type food) sometimes, though the kitchen isn’t always open. I recommend the chile taters with green chile and the lox bagels. They also have Italian sodas (sparkling water, flavored syrup and, optionally, cream), so you can bribe children (or me) to accompany you there, too.



Both Winnings and Summerhouse are located in the Brick Light District (across the street from UNM), which is a great place just to walk around. Check out the little courtyard behind Summerhouse—there’s a recently relocated sculpture there that you might find familiar.