[Location] Coffeehouses in Rochester, MN

Location: Rochester, Minnesota, United States of America, Earth, Sol, Milky Way, This Universe (or there abouts)

Rochester MN, the home of the World Famous Mayo Clinic (tm? sm? something?), as well as a large IBM design and manufacturing facility (specializing in RISC chips for the pSeries systems, and home of Blue Gene, the new super-computer for bioinformatics). It is located ~80 miles south of the Twin Cities' core cities of St Paul and/or Minneapolis. Connected conviently via Hwy 52. Its a boring drive across declining farmland and increasing town homes. Since last summer there are only two stop lights to interrupt the auto-pilot, and both are at about the half-way mark in Cannon Falls.

Rochester is a small city of about 90,000 people. Roughly 1/3 of which work for Mayo, 1/3 for IBM and the rest in hospitality/support industries for the area. There is also a Federal Prison Medical Center. Rochester because of Mayo is actually quite diverse for a rural Midwest city. People from all over the world pass through here, for the Clinic, IBM, or just as a stopping point. So as a result Rochester has a fairly diverse collection of ethnic dining. I say diverse using Minnesota standards, the Minnesotan pallete is usually quite bland, so that fact that a city of this size has many italian, mexcian, chinese, and a few indian restaurants is impressive. There is also on the periphery the obligatory American sprinkling of franchises, Wal-Mart, Shop-Ko, Target, Menards, Home Depot, McDonalds, Noodles and Co, etc., etc., ad nausem. This are situated in the new development areas where fields and woods have recently been converted into vast expanses of town homes. But for purposes of this discussion I will focus mainly on the older parts of the city and downtown more specifically.

Here is my list of coffeehouses, broken down by type:

Locally owned, specifically coffee only: 2
Marcelli's - a nice coffee house with good pastry, and excellent coffee. It is only open from ~6am-5pm. Across from St Mary's.

Double Click Internet Cafe - the only internet cafe I found in town, but with the prevelance of wi-fi here, almost everywhere has access. But the Double Click has computers you can rent. Coffee is pretty good, but the atmosphere and the building in which it is situated are really its main draw. Limited selection of pastries. Being someone who works with all things *nix, this is my place. Wi-Fi, shot of espresso, table with a view, power outlet = heaven. They close around 8pm.

Locallly owned, coffee plus other sutff: a few
(I have not hit every place in town that servers coffee as well as food or meals, so I will list the ones I have been too)
Jaspers - easily my favorite place. It is a bistro that servers espresso drinks, pastries and an affordable lunch. In the evening it is a location of fine dining and the menu gets prohibitively expensive. I enjoy a single-shot of espresso here. Nice building, nice atmosphere.

Franchises, not-locally owned: a lot
Caribou - located in the 'Subway' which is the warren of underground tunnels that connect everything in downtown Rochester (because of winter). Its Caribou, anyone who has ever been to one will know what it is like.

Starbucks - , located at various places. The notable ones is the one in the Chateau Theater Barnes and Noble. The Chateau is an old movie theater converted into a book store. The other on is in the Kahler across from the Gonda Building (one of the main Clinic buildings) and across from Rochester Methodist Hospital. Like Caribou, if you have been to one, you have been to this one.

Dunn Bros - various locations. The one by the Apache Mall has a drive thru.

Panera Bread - great sandwiches and pastries (tho a bit spendy). The coffee is decent and they have a giant fireplace which is nice on cold mornings.

Espresso Express (or Java Drive...something like this) - drive thru espresso. Don't have to get out of your car.

This town needs a local coffeeshop open after 9pm.

Did I mention there is also no brunch place...