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Georgetown University’s Newspaper of Record since 1920

The Hoya

Georgetown University’s Newspaper of Record since 1920

The Hoya

Victoria’s Secrets: Reward Yourself With Yellow

Victoria%E2%80%99s+Secrets%3A+Reward+Yourself+With+Yellow

In the third episode of “Victoria’s Secrets,” host Victoria Freeman (CAS ’26) gives a review of Yellow, a new Levant-inspired coffee shop in the Georgetown neighborhood. Take a listen to Freeman’s analysis of its ambiance, its flavors and, in classic VS fashion, what song it reminds her of.

Transcript:

Victoria Freeman (VF): It’s Victoria, and I have a secret.

VF: Today we’re going back to a review of a food and coffee place; we’re going to talk about Yellow, which is the place that recently opened up in Georgetown at 1524 Wisconsin Ave. So this one is really exciting because it is super accessible to all of us. It’s just a short walk away, but still enough of a walk that you’re able to get off of campus for a little bit. 

And I think what’s so great about this is that, honestly, we were all getting a little bit sick of Compass being the kind of the only coffee place that we all regularly go to. I mean, hey, there’s like Capital One Cafe, but I think we all know that’s not super exciting. That’s kind of like everyone’s last choice. But now we’ve got some new places shaking it up. And I definitely think that Yellow is one of the best options of those. 

And what makes Yellow so different and interesting is that it is a taste of the Levant, which is the eastern Mediterranean region of Asia, which includes the countries Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Palestine and Jordan. So it’s not just your typical food cafe, it’s definitely got a little bit of an interesting spin on it. And you can definitely see that in the different parts of it. 

So first, we’ve got the vibe of Yellow, which is super, honestly, homey: you’ve got half of it, which is little bit — a little bit more of a restaurant feel, and half of it is very much coffee-shop, with couches, seats by the window, that type of thing. And I think the layout of Yellow describes the whole restaurant very well in that half of it is regular food, regular table seating, but then you could also just go get a coffee and sit and drink the coffee. So I think Yellow sets out ambitiously to do a lot in tackling both of these things. And honestly, not that big of a place. But I think in terms of the food and the coffee, it delivers, because both of those are really good. 

In terms of the space itself, I think there’s the potential for it to get a little bit crowded, a little bit cramped — the seats of the restaurant area aren’t that comfortable, so I think it would benefit from being a little bit bigger. But, if you do get there at a downtime and get a seat, it is a really cool place to sit and read your book, because, I will say, it is not the type of place where you can do work, because laptops are not allowed. So Yellow is definitely more of a study break type of vibe, rather than a study place. 

But getting to what is, of course, the most important part — it’s what they actually serve there. Which is, at first, from all of what I heard about it, I got the vibe that it was a cafe. But it’s honestly quite a bit more than that. It offers full meals, both for breakfast and then also later on in the day. And of course they also have pastries. In terms of the sandwiches, those are delicious. And I think the food fulfills a market that we don’t have a lot of in Georgetown, because I don’t know of a lot of Middle Eastern food that’s accessible to us. So I think that the food is again one of the unique elements that makes this really appealing.

And this applies even more so to the coffee because even though I have tasted Middle Eastern food before and none of that is super eccentric, I truly have never tasted coffee like this before. Because I think that in the United States, Middle Eastern coffee is not really something we have much of.

So the types of coffees that I’ve had, some of the names are “Halva Honey” and “Turmeric and Honey,” and so you can tell from the names that these are not your typical lattes. They have flavors such as turmeric, tahini, and my favorites are the ones that are sweetened with dates. And these flavors are not overpowering — it still feels like you’re drinking a classic latte, typical coffee, but it adds just an extra element to make it that much more interesting, which is where Yellow really, really shines. 

And in terms of the accessibility, this is right on Wisconsin, so it’s the perfect place for Georgetown students to go and get coffee.

And so what in terms of the song that Yellow reminds me of? It reminds me of the song “Colorado” by Reneé Rapp. And this song is about the theoretical appeal of going to live a simple life in Colorado, but then deciding you’d rather have the complexity of your life right now. And I think that this describes Yellow very well, because of the fact that Yellow kind of says “let’s make your typical coffee just that much more interesting. Let’s shake things up.” 

Because, to give you my take, my secrets, I don’t think that Yellow is the place where you go for your everyday coffee, because I don’t really want that type of coffee every single day. I want that type of coffee, if maybe I want to reward myself after I just took a difficult final, or it’s a particularly nice day out and I want to take a break. So it’s not your everyday place. It’s your special place. 

And the other thing that I would share about — a secret about Yellow is that they do have books and magazines in there to read, which definitely makes the vibe a lot better. So you can make an entire outing of it. You can just bring yourself, credit card, sit there for multiple hours reading all of the books they have on the table there, which makes it really an enticing outing. So I would give this a rating of eight out of 10, and I would say that it would be the perfect excursion in the springtime from Georgetown.

This podcast was recorded by me, Victoria Freeman, edited by David Yang and produced by Amna Shamim. Thanks for listening!

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