Ipsento

Ipsento (Website)

2035 N. Western Ave., Chicago, IL 60647

773-904-8177  (Map It)

Hours:

     Mon-Fri: 6a-6p
      Sat-Sun: 7a-6p

Ipsento


Electrical Outlets:

Yes

WiFi:

Yes, free


A little food …

Without coffee, the subtleties of the Universe remain clouded and lost.  Coffee-less Hungry Physicists spend their precious lab time with their heads on the bench, and risk their experiments running wildly toward self-sustaining reactions.  We all know what happens next …  So, in the interest of scientific progress and the safety of mankind, any Hungry Physicist in the Wicker Park area should begin their day at Ipsento.

 

They roast coffee in a storefront one block down the road, and the staff is extremely knowledgeable about their product.  In fact, the staff makes Ipsento stand out against other cafes.  They’re friendly, knowledgeable, and chatty – with diverse backgrounds that make for great story-telling.  Additional props should be given to their food.  The menu is limited, but nicely focused toward a cafe environment; bagel sandwiches, humus plates, and pastries.  They even named sandwiches after notable authors, i.e. C. S. Lewis and Henry David Thoreau.  The signature drink, The Ipsento, introduces honey and cayenne pepper to a latte.  I’m not fond of it because honey and pepper do not belong in coffee, however it seems quite popular based on the number of people ordering it per hour.

Ipsento1

Ipsento falls short when it comes to study space.  It’s fairly small, with chairs and tables pushed wherever they can fit – great for individual study, but not ideal for group study.  Plenty of napkins wait to be written on, but you won’t want to.  Ipsento tries to be as green as possible, even to the point of selling only fair-trade coffee.  That said, writing on a napkin in this cafe feels like pulling a two-week old sapling out of the ground.

 

A little science …

More than anything, cafes are driven by steam.  (If there’s a Steam Punk café out there somewhere, please tell me!)  When we boil water, we add heat that eventually turns it into a gas the same temperature as the water (212 F or 100 C, at sea level).  Steam consists not only of the heat needed to raise its temperature, but also the heat needed to break the water’s molecular bonds.  So, even though it’s the same temperature, steam has higher energy than water and causes worse burns.