I have a secret boyfriend, and his name is Phil. My friends are convinced. For the past two years, I have almost constantly been “at Phil’s,” “in transit to Phil’s” or (at my worst) “desperately craving Phil’s.”
In a philosophy class at Stanford (yup–shameless plug!), you will learn about the hallowed theoretical principal “Occam’s razor.” It posits that this kind of weird, obsessive behavior probably has the simplest possible explanation: in this case, my secret affair with a dude named Phil.
Here, Occam’s razor is wrong. Phil is only my boyfriend in the same sense that shameless self-promotion is Mike “The Situation” Sorrentino’s boyfriend.
In fact, my constant jabber about “Phil” is actually in reference to Philz Coffee, a Bay Area coffee chain so good that it engenders frightening addictions and a cultish following.
The story of Philz Coffee begins in 2003, when San Francisco-native Phil Jaber started his first coffee shop in a space he had previously operated as a grocery store in San Francisco’s cooler-than-thou Mission District. From the get-go, Philz was unique in its insistence on brewing cups of coffee one at a time–a method that ensures freshness and higher quality. Working with his son, Jacob, Phil developed a distinctive brewing method and a slew of diverse bean blends.
The shop quickly became a neighborhood coffee hotspot, an impressive achievement among Mission District’s unwashed, coffee-obsessed hordes. Phil and Jacob presumably solidified their hipster credentials when they changed the name of their shop from the bourgeois “Phil’s” to the endearingly random misspelling, “Philz.”
Since 2003, Philz has expanded across the Bay Area into a mini-empire of really, really excellent coffee. Today, there are seven Philz locations–including one about 10 minutes away from campus in Palo Alto’s especially suburban midtown district.
The Palo Alto Philz feels incongruously cool compared to the surrounding pastel ranch houses. Inside, you’ll find a mix of Stanford kids, soccer moms and techie types. But most of the Philz clientele are people who look like they emerged from the womb already wearing fedoras and non-prescription tortoise-shell glasses. It’s common to hear Vampire Weekend tracks blaring on the speakers. I try to avoid showing up wearing pastels out of fear of judgment. This can be off-putting at first, but you soon learn to think of Philz’s hipster-ness as an exciting anthropological safari into a subculture that is pretty exotic for a city whose downtown consists of luxury rug shops and frozen yogurt stores. Plus, hipsters are a quiet breed; add the free WiFi to the mix, and Philz is a great place to study.
Ultimately though, the quality of the coffee is what makes Philz so addictive. Fellow Philz junkie Sekhar Paladugu ’12 calls it “glorious, delicious, smooth, balanced and just tasty.”
In fact, it’s hard to get Paladugu off the subject of how good Philz coffee tastes.
“It makes my day every time I go. It’s like dessert, except it’s coffee,” he gushed before pausing. “I just wish I could afford to drink it every day.”
At an average of four dollars for a custom-made cup from the store, an earth-shatteringly good cup of Philz coffee can break the bank once you get into the habit of going as often as I do. Fortunately, I recently discovered that the ground beans, averaging $14 a pound, aren’t substantially more expensive than a premium Starbucks blend. Keeping a bag of Philz beans in your room makes the whole place smell awesome. It also gives your room instant, underground foodie cred to impress that skinny hipster kid from IHUM section you’re still trying to woo.
I recently had the exciting chance to speak with Phil Jaber of Philz himself. He’s mostly busy right now gearing up for the opening of the newest Philz outpost, slated to open its doors on Oct. 3–a roomy store off University Avenue targeted especially at Stanford students. During our conversation, he kept laughing when I asked what puts his coffee miles above most other blends.
“I was just born to make coffee,” Jaber explained. “Philz is special. We do things with love and faith and truth.”
Sounds more like a cheesy love poem than the pitch for a successful coffee brand, doesn’t it? Maybe Phil is my secret boyfriend after all.