A tale of 3 cafes: Doux Cafe, Tree House Craft Coffee, and Tout Suite

Greetings Fanatics!

As Isaac grows older, I find that working from home gets a little more difficult. There are only so many times that I can listen to Isaac incorrectly sing "Jingle Bells" in his high, beautiful baby voice before my nerves get a little frazzled. It's too hot to really walk anywhere right now in Houston, where humidity is often at least 80% and the lows are at 90 degrees, so we often just stick at home waiting for Aaron to come home. As of late we've been going out to more cafes (to stay awake/get out of the house), whenever we can afford to. There are three that we've especially been frequenting and they're all locally owned, which is fun. With locally owned places you stray away from the corporate, homogeneous experience of, say, a Starbucks, which can be great once in a while. And sometimes, not so great.



Doux Cafe
865 Dairy Ashford Rd, Houston, Texas 77079

Doux Cafe is only a 10 minute walk from our apartment and the first one we tried after moving into our current place. The inside is very clean. Laminated wood tables with the Doux Cafe logo burned into it offers ample seating and chairs and tables are available outside to enjoy the weather (when there is weather to enjoy). Two crepe griddles and a waffle machine line the front of the glass divider on the counter, where you can see your stuff being made. A small display freezer of ice cream and gelato is in between two large counter display cases of pastries and macarons. Behind the counter, three screens display the different types of crepes and waffles you can get, along with some fruit platters and coffee. They have an expansive selection of toppings for their waffles and on weekends, they offer hot breakfast items, like eggs and sausages. We usually share a regular waffle with their signature triple chocolate coating.

I'd like to be clear about something. Aaron pretty much hates chocolate. Especially white chocolate which really isn't chocolate at all. But he loves these waffles. They come covered in a drizzled layer of three types of chocolate (white,milk, and dark), which is not just sauce but rather high quality melted chocolate. Since our first visit, we've tried the crepes, gelato, and a couple of macarons, but Aaron's favorite is still the chocolate and fruit covered waffle. It has juuust the right ratio of waffle, fruit, and melted chocolate. I would say that the crepe would do well with less topping, but my sister visiting from Seattle thought it was great. There's also a "secret" menu item: if you're willing to call ahead or wait two hours at the cafe, they will make you a chocolate sphere. They bring the chilled sphere to your table and pour warm chocolate over it, melting the sphere to reveal a now perfectly drizzled plate of chocolate covered fruit.

 Doux Cafe has a really relaxed and quiet atmosphere; cowboy music plays softly in the background and it always makes me laugh to hear it because it doesn't quite fit the the rest of the cafe's Parisian theme. The staff is pretty small and incredibly friendly. They're always very attentive and ready to take your order whenever. The owner was in the last time we stopped by and chatted with Isaac. If you're overwhelmed with the choices, be sure to ask any staff member for a recommendation.

Tree House Craft Coffee & Frozen Yogurt
14008 Memorial Dr, suite #B Houston, TX 77079

Tree House Craft Coffee is located in a shopping center near us, maybe a 5 minute drive. We wandered in one day, in search of some caffeine. It's quite bright and cheerful inside, with a center island serving as the register and frozen yogurt topping area. There are plenty of tea and coffee options to choose from, and since it was a sunny day, Aaron and I opted for iced coffee and got Isaac a gelato. I had the Sweet Iced Latte which is just a shot of espresso mixed with ice, simple syrup and (your choice of) milk , because I am a trash coffee drinker and the more diluted the coffee is the better it is for me. Aaron, who usually drinks gallons of the free black coffee they offer at Home Depot, ordered a drink called the 1885, a concoction made with cane sugar Dr. Pepper, espresso, and ice. The 1885 was actually much better than we expected! It had a strong Dr. Pepper flavor that didn't quite overwhelm the coffee. We were buzzy for the rest of the afternoon. We also had a cinnamon roll, which I normally avoid because they tend to let me down. The cinnamon roll was from Sinfull Bakery here in Houston and was excellent and soft and made me believe in cinnamon rolls again. We've been back to Tree House a couple of times, especially for the coffee which is very smooth. They roast their beans in house every week and have some frightening looking space age coffee equipment in the back corner.

The staff is friendly and quick to offer a suggestion if it's your first time there. The ambiance is nice, kind of quiet and detached. There's no real atmosphere to keep you lingering there after you've finished your coffee, but overall it is a nice place to get sweets and good coffee.

Tout Suite
Locations at

2001 Commerce St Houston, TX 77002

and also inside of Memorial City Mall

There are currently two locations of Tout Suite - one in trendy East Downtown in a re purposed warehouse and the one we went to in Memorial City Mall. It's impossible to miss the Tout Suite in Memorial City Mall; instead of being nestled into the wall like most of the stores or having a modest kiosk off to the side, Tout Suite is a huge, beautiful structure of well lit laminate wood and glass cases filled with well spaced desserts. Although it's trying its hardest not to be a Starbucks, that's the vibe it gives off. The owner of Tout Suite also owns SWEET in City Centre and many of the desserts come from SWEET's bakery. Although the Mall's Tout Suite only offers a condensed version of the original location, its offerings are still expansive. That being said, it's almost prohibitively expensive for anything other than a "treat yourself" kind of occasion. We decided to share a cafe sua da, a mini key lime pie, and a sausage croissant. This cost us a little more than $11. That being said, the quality of our food and coffee was great. The sausage croissant was very flaky and buttery and the sausage itself was well spiced and an actual sausage, although this item was not warmed up properly. The key lime pie, although only being a little bigger than a silver dollar, was quite limey with real browned meringue on top. I personally don't care for cafe sua da - the condensed milk hurts my stomach - but Aaron said he liked it better than Tree House and that they might have used espresso instead of normal coffee because it tasted stronger. All of the items we got and in the glass case were extremely photogenic and lovely looking.

My problem lay in the customer service. One of the things that really irks me is blatantly poor customer service. I feel like the real advantage of having a small business is that you're able to give your customers a personalized, memorable (hopefully positive) experience. Besides having an extremely condescending barista mangle sister Hannah's order, our own barista thrust Aaron's coffee out to him nearly spilling it on him, no doubt in too much of a hurry to go back and stand by the coffee machines to scowl to apologize to him.



One of the reason I do these online reviews is so there are more human experiences and opinions available to those who want to read them. It's important to me that there's information out there that consumers can use to form an informed decision about whether or not they might like a product. Tout Suite doesn't seem to share that same thought. If you're a long time reader of this blog, you know about my absolute revile of unprofessional online behavior. Tout Suite's Facebook page manager has a habit of taking the negative reviews personally and responding with childish brush offs and a show of poor reading comprehension. If you're not mature enough to respond to a customer professionally, you probably shouldn't be running a business (or at least the social media account).

Incorrect. If the Tout Suite account robot knew how to read, it would have seen that the reviewer was offered a refund by the server in the form of a gift card and gave said gift card away to another patron anyway.

The layout of the actual kiosk is un-intuitive. There are two registers, one where you can purchase coffee and another one where you buy food and also coffee. You can get your food at the second register where the tables are, but to get your coffee you have to go to the other side of the kiosk and then return back to the tables. Even if your barista is standing right next to you with your finished drink, you have to go with them to the other side so that they can throw your drink at you. 

Ultimately, Tout Suite had some good food and alright coffee. It's definitely trying so hard to not be Starbucks that it can't see that it's essentially overpriced, shitty customer service Starbucks. I won't be back; as you've already read, there are other local coffee shops that deserve your business. Go there if you want to be able to say that you've been to Tout Suite, take a picture of your beautiful macaron and coffee cup, and try to ignore the servers. And for goodness sake, try not to post anything bad about them online.

Stay Fanatic,
Megh