Urbana Cafe East Walnut Hills — Restaurant in Cincinnati

All things to all delicious-beverage imbibing people? No. Urbana strives to be a certain kind of coffee shop; and that - the pretension of being different, not any one thing (other than the, ahem, ‘curated’ no-Wi-Fi environment, more on which in a moment) - ends up being its most distinctive characteristic.

As such, the usual variables for which we assign marks - coffee, service, atmosphere, function as a place for work, relaxation or conversation - are harder to pin down, and end up being an odd composite of “pretty good” and, simultaneously, vague irritants.

Maybe it is all because - while I genuinely respect the “mission” to stimulate meaningful interaction - the most noteworthy characteristic of the Urbana experience is the bit of heavy-handed social engineering (other shops manage this quite well - and without trumpeting a normative position on it - with ‘sip-and-sit’ policies and timed-with-purchase codes) that is the “no Wi-Fi” policy, complete with position statement on the wall. The ship is obviously not casting a wide net, content to let you appreciate how it differentiates itself - or not.

It is what it is - and because Urbana says so at the outset and openly - it seems fairest to judge it on other merits. And those are all, in short, “pretty good”. The coffee is consistently decent if not great; and likewise for the pleasant but non-descript atmosphere, serviceably civil milquetoast hipster baristas of middling skill, and juuust-on-this-side-of-too-expensive (relative to the value received, in quantity and quality) pricing.

This nets out to a 3.5-3.75 out of 5. I’m glad it’s in the neighborhood, do continue to go on occasion and never have a bad experience, but with many more shops inside the EWH/WH/OBryonville area, it has shuffled lower in the...

I've been ordering a "vanilla latte" here a half dozen times since it's near my son's new school. Turns out they've been giving me sugar free vanilla without ever bothering to even ask if that was ok despite me ordering "vanilla latte" every time.

When I finally noticed this morning that I was getting sugar free, I asked the barista as she pumped the syrup "is that sugar free? Do you have regular?"

Her response: "no, we don't"

No apology, no offer to remake differently, just: "no, we don't"

Wow. I've been getting the sugar free switcheroo for weeks and nobody in this cafe seems to conceive of a world where a customer wouldn't want that.

And anyone who says that I didn't notice, so what's the big deal? I did. For four or five lattes I thought to myself "this tastes like sugar free". At first I chalked it up to a barista mistake. It happens. But the third or fourth time it was clearly a pattern, hence why I made sure to watch the preparation of today's latte.

Don't think I'll be...

Praise for Urbana's second location in Walnut Hills! Beautiful, clean and comfortable atmosphere with delicious pastries, crepes and bagels with the best coffee in the city.

Much larger space to hang and chat with friends than the Broadway location and always good music playing.

Yes, this is a coffee shop without wifi. I see people (students mainly) are disappointed in this. Understandable, but if you walk into a coffee shop and every seat is taken up by students on their laptops and spend the entire day there with only purchasing one cup of coffee, that is taking up space for other larger groups to come in and enjoy the space for its intended use. There are two sides to the coin always. If you have to have wifi then you can always use your phone data plans. You should not fault the coffee shop because of their choice to do so. Enjoy your coffee, some snacks, great baristas and good company all...