Onward Coffee — Restaurant in Huntsville

First I want to say, I was visiting Huntsville for the first time and wanted to try out some local coffee shops, upon entering no one greeted us maybe because they were huddled together talking, the two young women behind the counter literally just stared at us while one walked up to the cash register and asked us how were we doing.

Normally when walking into some place and it’s not a greeting we normally just walk out but I still wanted to stay the course. We ordered an apple crisp matcha and a cinnamon toast matcha both with oatmilk, my mother requested to have no ice and I wanted light ice along with a blueberry muffin.

We stated that we wanted the drinks to be sweet and the young lady stated that the syrup that they use makes it sweet. We paid and sat down. The blonde haired young lady brought out our order and I thought it was weird that it came in kitchen cups that you get from someone’s house .

The blueberry muffin was good but my mom’s cup was not filled to the top like mine was, it was just halfway filled. So the young lady stated it was because my mom requested to have no ice so that’s why they didn’t fill up the cup. Excuse me? If you all are gonna charge us full price then give us the full product, that was the most ridiculous thing I’ve heard.

Then on top of that both of our matchas were not sweet, in fact it was one of the worst matchas we’ve ever had. It was bland, watery and bitter. So we noticed that after my mother asked why the cup wasn’t full the blonde haired young lady went to the other girl behind the counter and said something and they both looked our way, then all of a sudden everybody huddled up in the back kitchen.

I don’t know if these workers are college students or just plain unprofessional and ignorant but that was such a turn off and a disappointment because I saw that they had 4.9 stars and nothing really bad was said about this place so we wanted to stop for a matcha like we do back home.

We will never patron this business again. After trying other places here, this experience just put more of a bad taste in our mouths with Huntsville businesses because we haven’t had a good experience yet. We walked out and left the matchas on the table.

Extremely disappointing. And please teach your employees not to stare at someone, because I hate to make things a race issue but why else are we being stared at like we were some type of freak show? And no one bothered to wipe the table off that we were sitting at, it had matcha spilled on it and even when she sat down our order she looked dead at it...

Finally got a chance to try out this new coffee spot in Huntsville. They operated as a cart for a while until the physical location got built up. It's in the Research Park area, not too far off from University Drive. It's tucked away a little bit, next to the new Viet Crispwich restaurant, but on the bright side there's plentiful parking.

The vibes are pretty much immaculate here. Bright, cheerful, airy, but also private if you need -- there are several reclusive booths covered by archways, a perfect hidden away spot to work on a laptop or something. They have cute merchandise and even dedicated items and areas to keep little ones entertained. There's seating indoors and a couple of patio tables and chairs outside too.

Service was pleasant enough. We didn't chat much but I was greeted and smiled at and my beverage was ready in a timely manner, so that's all you really need.

The menu has coffee classics and then a few seasonal specials. There's matcha too, at least currently. There are supposed to be some baked goods for snackage, but when I visited at about 10:30 on Monday, they only had a few cookies and a brownie. I was hoping for something more in the realm of banana bread or a muffin, but they were wiped out. Maybe Monday is a restock day. They're only open til 2 PM, so definitely a morning/early afternoon hangout only.

I got an iced salted caramel latte to go, and I enjoyed it well enough. To me, I really didn't taste any salted caramel, but it was a good iced latte: rich, smooth, almost buttery, and not too bitter. Not as sweet as I'd like but that's often the case with what I consider more "serious" coffee places like this one. If you enjoy coffee, I think you'll like this coffee. It was certainly strong coffee, cause my husband said it was basically emanating off me when I got home. lol.

Give them a try and don't forget to take a cute picture with their gorgeous mural! I'll likely return...

It is the smell first, not the light or the sound, for the smell comes before the door closes behind you, before the hum of the espresso machine or the murmured syllables of two students bent over a laptop, and it is the smell that carries with it all the mornings you did not know you were waiting for, mornings when the air is heavy with the last reluctant cool of night and the sun slants down across the bricks outside in a way that makes you believe there is still some unhurried place in the world, and so you step into it, into this long room with its clean lines and warm wood, the light pooling on the counter where the barista—tall, deliberate, moving with the quiet certainty of someone who has spent too many hours watching milk spin into that precise silk—waits not so much for you to order as for the ritual itself to begin. And the coffee, black and unadorned if you will have it that way, is deep and slow in the mouth, the kind of cup that makes you linger over it not because it cools but because each swallow asks to be remembered, and somewhere in the back the grinder starts up again, a sound like gravel breaking under bicycle tires, pulling you back to the present where the conversations rise and fall, where someone laughs too loud, where the light shifts just enough to make you see that you have been sitting here longer than you meant to, that you will leave soon but not yet, not before the last drop, because here—here in Onward Coffee—you understand that onward is not about hurrying at all, but about moving in the direction of...