Best of Tucson 1996: Best Specialty Drinks

Best Specialty Drinks

Cuppuccinos Coffee House
3400 E. Speedway

READERS' AND STAFF PICK: Cuppuccinos has, bar none, the best café mocha around. They mix the powdered mocha concoction themselves, using real Hershey's cocoa, pure cane sugar and who knows what else; and they mix it directly with the espresso, ensuring a sinfully smooth cup of joe, hot or iced. A full Torani bar sweetens your choice of coffee drinks, steamed milk, and Italian cream sodas. And if sweet isn't your thing, the standard espresso drinks including cappuccinos, lattes, breves and americanos are tailor made to meet your every whim and ritual. Ground cinnamon and Ghiradelli chocolate shavings grace every hurricane glass and bowl-sized mug. Be sure to consider the drink of the day, most always some clever deviation from the norm.

READERS' POLL RUNNER UP: Position yourself at the elongated lima bean-shaped table, in full view of the ducky plastic Keeper of Sweets that stands vigil above the mammoth dessert compound displaying the day's ration of fresh-baked cakes and sweet breads. This is the place to relish one of the innovative beverages at Bentley's House of Tea and Coffee, 1730 E. Speedway, where, if you can remember how to order it, they'll do the rest. If you can shoulder the burden of placing an order amidst the plethora of variables at hand--more than 30 syrup flavors, temperature options (hot? cold? frozen?), caffeine quotient, ethical dilemmas (milk? barely milk? soy product?)--your sweet reward arrives speedily, served by counter intelligence agents both aloof enough to prove their independence from the robotic, corporate chain-gang mentality, and professional enough to inspire confidence in their coffee slinging competence. Throw in an industrious, academically social atmosphere, a collective humming along to songs by The Cure, and a faint aroma of toasted Oreos, and you have something worthy of raising your iced-soy-mint-mocha in salute.