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Great Lakes Coffee Offers New Java Experience In Midtown

DETROIT (WWJ) - A new coffee bar in Detroit's midtown offers the unique experience of having your coffee filtered and your espresso brewed one cup at a time.

Owner James Cadariu calls it an 'Institute for Advanced Drinking'.

"So it's something new, providing the people ... with something they haven't had before - a really well thought out beverage program that you would find in New York or Paris or San Francisco," said Cadariu.

Great Lakes Coffee
Great Lakes Coffee Roasting Company. (Photos/Violet Ikonomova)
Great Lakes Coffee
Great Lakes Coffee Roasting Company. (Photos/Violet Ikonomova)
Great Lakes Coffee
The Great Lakes Coffee Roasting Company in midtown Detroit. (WWJ/ Violet Ikonomova)
Great Lakes Coffee
Great Lakes Coffee Roasting Company. (Photos/Violet Ikonomova)
Great Lakes Coffee
Great Lakes Coffee Roasting Company. (Photos/Violet Ikonomova)
Great Lakes Coffee
Great Lakes Coffee Roasting Company. (Photos/Violet Ikonomova)
Great Lakes Coffee
Coffee filtering one cup at a time. (WWJ/Violet Ikonomova)
Great Lakes Coffee
Great Lakes Coffee Roasting Company. (Photos/Violet Ikonomova)
Great Lakes Coffee
Great Lakes Coffee Roasting Company. (Photos/Violet Ikonomova)
Great Lakes Coffee
Great Lakes Coffee Roasting Company owner James Cadariu. (Photos/Violet Ikonomova)
Great Lakes Coffee
Great Lakes Coffee Roasting Company. (Photos/Violet Ikonomova)
Great LakesCoffee
Great Lakes Coffee Roasting Company. (Photos/Violet Ikonomova)

Great Lakes Coffee has chosen the corner of Woodward and Alexandrine as its first retail site for artisan roasted fair trade coffee. All the coffees are roasted to order on a 25 pound San Franciscan drum roaster to ensure that "quality is so fresh and so clean."

"So not just meeting the demands of the market but I think I'm creating a space that hasn't been available before in the city," Cadariu said.

In addition to selling the company's coffee, the shop offers Michigan-brewed beer, fine wine and appetizers.

Their coffee of the month is the "bailout blend," an exclusively Detroit blend. It's described as "a complex cup full of liquorice and chocolate."

"Holding the high ground against a society drowning in a sea of coffee mediocrity," is how the company describes itself on the website. "The Great Lakes Coffee Roasting Company is a Fair Trade certified, artisan roaster. Our coffee blends are as refined as a Bordeaux and our single-origin coffees are as unique as a single-malt scotch. Ahead by a nose."

Organic Great Lakes Coffee sells for $13.98 a pound.

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