Groove Coffee House

When I started planning a small trip to the Newport Aquarium for the three of us, I made sure to look for indie coffee shops in the Covington/Newport area of northern Kentucky. The area has had a nouveau-hip thing going on for a long time (especially in Covington), but we haven’t been down there in years, so I wasn’t entirely sure of the lay of the land. I was prepared to pay for coffee from Starbucks for only the fifth time since I swore off Starbucks on Labor Day, 2008. (Yes, I swore off paying for coffee from Starbucks for good, which is distinct from drinking the stuff gratis at the old juke joint; and yes, I am counting the relapses.*) As luck would have it, though, a simple Google search turned up a place called Groove Coffee House in Covington; and the map showed it to be pretty close to the hotel we would be staying at.

As helpful as Google Maps can be, though, it ain’t the same as being on the ground in a new place. However, it turns out that Covington and Newport are eminently walkable, especially the stretch of Main Street in Covington that contains Groove Coffee House. We also walked a good part of the actual Newport on the Levee shopping center area, and several blocks worth of Monmouth Street, which is perpendicular to...now that I think about it, I’m not entirely sure which street Newport on the Levee fronts on; but whichever one it is, Monmouth Street is perpendicular to it, at pretty much the dead center of the shopping center (or whatever pretentious twaddle serves as a naming convention for these non-mall malls this week).

Main Street in Covington, from where we picked it up at 5th Street, south to at least the coffee shop, reminded me of Mass Ave, except older, and even better organized. (And when I say better organized, what I mean is elements like sidewalks and street signs—those little things that bring cohesion to potentially disparate objects.) There were lots of English pubs, the aforementioned coffee shop, a tattoo parlor, at least one pizza place, and an old movie theatre that had been converted into a music venue; and those are just the things I can come up with off the top of my head, after two trips down to the coffee shop and back. There’s a website, which probably lists all the different shops; but that would sort of be cheating, wouldn’t it?

The coffee shop is inside what used to be an old house, with chalkboard menus hung on the wall behind the counter, a few shelves with reusable coffee mugs and bags of whole bean coffee for sale, and local art adorning the walls. The tip jar is labeled “Karma,” and there’s a little basket where you can recycle used cardboard coffee sleeves. We struck up an easy conversation with Pete, the fellow behind the counter (who I suspect also owns the place, though I did not ask to be sure), who quickly recommended several good places to eat in the area when we told him we were from out of town. It was good coffee and good conversation, an excellent way to start our day out and about in northern Kentucky. I decided almost immediately that I would be back later that day or definitely the following day, on our way out of town, for another latté and a bag of ground coffee for my mom.

We did not end up getting back there later the first day, but we stopped in after checking out of the hotel on Wednesday morning, and while he was making our drinks, Pete talked to a young lady who came in to inquire about using the coffee shop for a reception for her photography students. Without missing a beat, Pete told her she could have the whole upstairs, both for her reception, and as a place where the students could hang their photographs. I got the impression from their conversation that they had met before, but did not know each other well—and yet he treated her like he would have done an old friend. I can’t imagine that the young lady would have gotten what she had come in asking about if she had tried a Starbucks, or any other corporate coffee shop; and that’s one of the things that make indie places of business so much better than the corporate clones.

The lattés were awfully good, too. For me, the Groove Coffee House, and the surprisingly lovely stretch of Main Street that it lives on, were the highlight of our little trip—which is not to say that any of the rest of it was bad, just that the coffee shop was really, really good. I don’t know if the aquarium was worth $23 a pop (and another $14 for Jackson), but there are plenty of other things to do in the area (although the Cubs only come to town for two three-game series this season)—and a trip down there could theoretically be done in a day. I don’t know when we’ll get back to the area—maybe a trip to Kings Island this summer—but Groove Coffee House will definitely be on the itinerary when we do.

Groove Coffee House
640 Main Street
Covington, KY
859-992-0737

*—Even this is misleading. What the hell does relapse mean? Any opportunity to purchase a cup of coffee while out and about in the world is an opportunity to support the local place over the corporate chain. This is the most important thing. If an occasion for getting coffee out and about in the world presents itself, and I wind up with Starbucks rather than Lazy Daze or Mo’Joe or the Monon, then I have, to some extent, failed. Of course, there can be extenuating circumstances, including having been given a gift card or being out with co-workers when the company is paying. Such circumstances account for three of the four times I have gotten coffee at Starbucks since Labor Day, 2008. The fourth was just a lapse in judgment on my part.