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This review is first in a series of articles submitted by the students at Fort Collins High School.
Indulge Café: Latest Cultural Focus
Article by S. Perla, Fort Collins High School Student
Photos used courtesy of Indulge Café
 While people leisurely walk Old Town, they witness first-hand the diverse cultures of Fort Collins, like places that range from being Chinese, Indian, Nepal/Tibet, Native American, Japanese, Italian, and Mexican. And now a new culture has been introduced to Fort Collins, a Turkish/Moroccan coffee shop named Indulge Café. Its name is an accurate depiction of its shop: treating and indulging oneself to delicious coffee, pastries, and lunch. Indulge Café and other local businesses like it should be embraced in order to make Fort Collins unique, diverse and keep it that way.
As I walk into the coffee shop, its dim lighting accents its rich painted walls of dark red and brown. The café is luxuriously filled with warm lanterns attached to the wall, rich vibrant Middle Eastern colors, Moroccan artifacts on the tables, and cozy furniture. Middle Eastern music is playing delicately in the background. There’s also a framed picture of the first dollar earned in the store. The owner, who is a Libyan-native, opened this place only a few months ago. Indulge Café is a great place to go to and read, do homework, or even surf the internet with this coffee shop’s free wireless internet.
At Indulge Café, items array from baklava, Turkish delights, juice, tea, and coffee. There’s Arabic coffee and Turkish coffee that’s flavored with cardamom. If one were to get the coffee to go, they put the coffee in a cute mini to-go cup, as Turkish and Arabic coffee is consumed in small amounts. If one chooses to stay in the store, the coffee would be sipped out of a mini-mug made of glass with intricate designs painted on it. One can certainly feel the Middle Eastern atmosphere while visiting this shop. Prices of the sweets are about $1.95 each and the Turkish delights are priced by the pound. They also have fatiras, a baked piece of bread that can either have meat, cheese, or zaatar (a spice). Other brunch items such as hummus and grape leaves are also sold and are quite appetizing as well.
Coffee shops are typically a place where people go to, well, drink coffee. But they are also places to socialize and unwind. Coffee shops in Fort Collins often get labeled as to what types of people go there. For example, the elder crowd goes to Starry Night to sit and have an extensive conversation, the Christian crowd goes to Everyday Joe’s, the higher middle class go to Starbucks, and the free-spirited go to the Alley Cat. Of course, one doesn’t need to be in any crowd to go to these certain coffee shops. Indulge Café, being a brand new place, doesn’t have a label as to what kinds of people go there. The owner’s intention wasn’t to make it just a place for Middle Eastern crowds; his intention was to have non-Middle Eastern people come and indulge themselves in a diverse atmosphere. He believes that people from the Middle East already recognize what a fatira is, and that it’s time to have non-Middle Easterner's understand and try a diverse type of food. One can be rich, poor, old, young, an Arab, and a non-Arab. Just go there and embrace a new culture that has come to Old Town in Fort Collins. Even if one is aware of this culture, it’s still nice to go and try something out of the usual. Of course, because the owner is Muslim, he won’t offer alcoholic drinks or serve food with pork ingredients. But this is just another part of experiencing the Middle Eastern culture and Muslims (Muslims don’t drink alcohol nor eat pork).
Fort Collins is a small town overflowing with franchises of restaurants and coffee shops.. In order for Fort Collins to be diverse and like none other, local businesses must be patronized. Indulge Café is one of these places. If coffee shops like Indulge Café close down due to lack of business, a piece of culture from Fort Collins would be missing. People won’t be familiar with how delicious Turkish coffee is and how hospitable the Middle Eastern owners can be. Stereotypes and assumptions about certain types of restaurants and coffee shops would be floating around instead of facts from experience. Delicious deserts like mammoul (a sweet sold at Indulge Café) would be unknown if places like Indulge Café were not in Fort Collins. This is why people must visit small businesses similar to Indulge Café.
Indulge Café is situated on 147 West Oak Street Suite 101. This café is open Monday through Thursday: 11 am to 9 pm, Friday and Saturday: 11 am to 11 pm, and Sunday: 12 pm to 9 pm. (Can you include the hours of operation please?) It’s an appealing little shop that’s across the parking lot from Taj Mahal (another representation of diversity in Fort Collins). Parking can be complicated, so try to park across the street. Also, it may be hard to distinguish where the store is at first because there isn’t a sign above the shop; the café’s name is printed on the window in an exquisite font. This store is also accessible for the handicapped.
No doubt, Indulge Café is a new place to visit and enjoy while experiencing a new culture in Fort Collins. It’s a great place to relax and try diverse types of coffee, pastries, and lunch. It’s a café without a label that was opened with the intention of raising awareness about a culture. This small coffee shop is filled with Middle Eastern sense in every way, and adds to the diverse atmosphere and culture of Old Town Fort Collins. |
