a cafe for second thoughts
a cafe where you can take back every order
Every espresso
Every almost-espresso
is kept on a shelf behind the counter, labeled with the name
of the customer who didn't quite order it, waiting to be
unremembered by end of day.
a cafe that remembers what you almost said
Between the moment you raise a hand to order and the moment
you speak, there is a silence
vestibule
— undo.cafe is the architecture of that vestibule,
rendered in chrome
graphite and paper.
a cafe that exists one keystroke before the present
The door opens a half-second before you arrive. The chair
has already been pulled out. The cup is
full
almost full.
Time here runs at a slight backspace — always about to be
rewritten, never committed to the clean draft.
a cafe with infinite history
Every order ever
placed
considered
is kept on the shelves. The shelves are
endless
wider than they appear.
The staff cannot tell you what is on any given shelf,
only that everything you never asked for is there.
a cafe that forgets on command
The opposite shelf. Press
escape
⌘Z
and the order, the table, the
conversation
near-conversation
— all of it unthreads itself, as if it had never been
woven in the first place. You keep only the aftertaste
of having nearly chosen.
a cafe that is also an editor
The menu is a document
palimpsest.
Each item is a line of prose being continuously
rewritten by the room itself. Sometimes the espresso
is a sentence. Sometimes the sentence is a
croissant
croissant-shaped footnote.
a cafe.
this paragraph is currently being written