It could be said that the problem with reviews on a site like Yelp is that they're usually written only under exceptional circumstances: the guest was left with either a wonderful or revolting impression. This means that the standard fare of experiences are often excluded. In general, since beginning to frequent Hudson Roastery a few months ago, despite living in the area since the middle of 2023, I've found it to be a well-run cafe, with a positive dynamic between its employees, a pleasantly lit and arranged interior, and the best coffee on Warren Street. If I were coming here to aggregate those experiences, I'd leave Hudson Roastery with a strong four-star review.
It's with frustration, then, that I'm leaving a negative review -- but my hope is that what I write will be taken into account by management. My partner and I stopped by to both get drinks and a meal. I ordered my meal, the egg sandwich with avocado and ham, earlier, and it was delicious. As usual, great coffee. We had settled into the newly added space on the armchairs, and after about five minutes were the only people occupying the room.
We had come to get a little work done on our laptops, and so had been enjoying ourselves for about twenty minutes -- thirty minutes at most -- when the manager came in and started talking to us. She first asked if we were new to the area or visiting, and when we said that we'd lived here since last July, and that I'd been to Hudson Roastery multiple times, she seemed surprised. No matter! I figured she was just chatting -- until she segued into talking about how she envisioned the cafe as a place for "socializing", such that she wanted to discourage the use of laptops, and how prolonged laptop usage could get in the way of other guests sitting down. In other words, she was asking us to put our laptops away, and her question about whether or not we were local seemed to me to carry with it an implicit judgment, as if our attire and/or behavior indicated us being "outsiders."
I am a person who makes efforts to view things from other people's perspectives, and I could understand the manager's request if these conditions were present:
- There was at least one sign somewhere indicating a preference or rule for Hudson Roastery being a laptop-free zone
- I had frequented Hudson Roastery before and seen other people using laptops being asked to put their computers away
- The establishment was busy and people were looking for seating
- My partner and I had been occupying the seats for a very long time and had only ordered drinks which we'd consumed long ago
Not one of these conditions were present, however. This was a Wednesday afternoon, no one was in the room we were occupying, the place was not busy (there wasn't even a line of people), we had ordered meals (my partner was awaiting the shakshuka), and it couldn't even be said that the activities we were using our laptops for were trivial, such as viewing entertainment videos on YouTube. All of this combined to remind my partner and myself of an angering and alienating experience we had in 2022 when walking into Swoon, another location on Warren Street, and being demeaned by the receptionist because we weren't dressed as if we were ready to board our yacht. It was hard to not feel like the manager at Hudson Roastery would not have come by to talk to us if my partner were seated more "properly" in the armchair and were wearing more formal attire.
Our experiences in Hudson have, overall, been positive since moving here a little more than a year ago, but it's impossible to miss the cultural aspects of classism which come out here and there, from the snobbish attitudes of certain higher-ups, to the shops which sell pieces of scrap-wood as cutting boards for $120. My partner and I, both people of very modest means, want to feel at home here, and this interaction, while delivered as civilly as possible, left me confused and my partner visibly upset. If you don't want people to use laptops, you need to make it into an explicit policy, and put a sign up. You can't cherry-pick how you enforce it, because that's bound to play into your visual prejudices about who is and who isn't a "legitimate" customer. I now find myself in a position where I'd like to return to the place with the best coffee in town, but I really don't feel comfortable coming back, and I'm just so weary of covert classism. My partner certainly will never return. What a shame! read more