Crescendo Espresso Bar — Restaurant in Madison

After making a trip to Madison yesterday to shop at Lush, I decided to get coffee before the drive home. Crescendo was recommended. I’d like to give 5/5 stars for the coffee but the 2 is the overall average for my coffee and experience. The experience was so bad I almost turned around to give my coffee back…

The coffee was wonderful. I ordered a 20oz raspberry late with oat milk, no foam. Their espresso is smooth and delicious. No complaints.

As for the service. Yuck. I approached the counter friendly with a smile but was not greeted. I asked the girl assisting me if the syrups for the lates were vegan and her response was, “I don’t know…”. She seemed irritated. She looked at one of the syrups and told me, “I guess so.” I had to confirm and be certain since she was unsure.

Besides the fact that she was someone who did not want to be bothered, I found it extremely odd that she didn’t know if the syrups were vegan because they had vegan food on their menu. Not just an item with no meat or dairy but with tofu.

When my drink was ready I grabbed it and thanked the girl who made it. I received the eye roll. She heard me. I thanked her again. She said nothing.

I don’t know what’s wrong with the staff here but I don’t care how good the coffee is… it’s not worth the b*tchy service....

My wife and I love Crescendo’s coffee. We haven’t had a single experience when their coffee has been bitter. We often come in and buy cups of coffee and also bags of their espresso to make at home. Every time it’s top quality at such a reasonable price.

When we decided on a coffee themed baby shower, we knew we needed to incorporate their coffee into the event. Our dream of having a barista prepare coffee was unfortunately not realized because they had an event, but they were still able to accommodate drip coffee. Cait was great at setting this up for us, and making it stress free. Our guests were blown away by the quality of the coffee, they said it was one of the best coffee they’ve had in a long time. When we had an issue with one of the containers, Justin at the store was super responsive and communicated with Cait to rectify the issue way beyond our expectations.

We will certainly continue to enjoy this amazing coffee shop and encourage anyone in the area to try it. It’s one of the...

It was just… okay? I was really disappointed because it wasn’t what I thought it would be.

Coffee: not strong flavor at all. Not strong sweet flavor and not strong coffee flavor so it ended up just being bland. I got two both with different syrups and you couldn’t taste the syrup flavor AT ALL. Hazelnut is a pretty strong flavor too and I didn’t taste a thing. Something to be said about the fact that I can make better coffee at home…

Food: OKAY. Very pricey but only thing that was worth it was the “treehugger”. Felt like the only draw to their toast options was that they had super thick bread.

Best part was just the shop itself looking good. ALSO I’m seeing people get these cute plates and cups. I ordered for there NOT TO GO and got paper plate, plastic clear cup, and warm to go cup. Not the vibe. Expected more considering I made a pretty lofty order of...