The Coffee Guide

At the risk of coming across as a cliché coffee lover that incessantly talks about coffee to any and all disinterested listeners, I’ll be writing about my favorite coffee spots in the hospital.  For the record, I do love coffee and drink quite a lot of it (ask my TBL group from first year- I drank enough to make my eye twitch for a month once), which makes this quite possibly the only topic I am a legitimate authority on.


Valentine Esposito, MS2

MS1 year at Duke Med is amazing because you can stream many of your classes and you always know your schedule for the day, which allows you to plan for when and where you get your coffee.  My MS1 move was to bring an XL Dunkin to class in the morning and then grab coffee from NOSH’s Jo Rae Café in the TSCHE for the afternoon.  As an MS2, my XL Dunkin days are behind me since I can’t chug that much coffee before prerounds and that kind of fluid intake is prohibitive on certain rotations (looking at you surgery).  Anyways, I am getting by, but there’s a bit of strategy involved….

When I have less than five minutes to go grab coffee:  This all depends on the time of day and where I happen to be in the hospital.  If I’m at Duke North, my first step is to check the line at Starbucks.  If and when the Starbucks has a really long line, I’ll go to the Duke North cafeteria.  Even when the cafeteria is busy, you make the coffee yourself and the cashier lines move quickly, so it is almost always a safe bet.  If I’m in Duke South, there’s a Seattle’s Best stand in the cafeteria there that seldom has a line.  The cafeteria in the Duke Medical Pavilion (right near Duke South and TSCHE) also has a self-serve coffee station, but the cashier lines can be pretty long.  Make friends with the cashiers at the DMP- if the line is crazy long and you shoot them desperate look, they sometimes will just let you quietly leave with your coffee in hand and sanity in tact.  If I happen to be in TSCHE, it’s Jo Rae Café every time- the line can be long, but it moves, I promise.

When I want a really big cup of coffee:  Anywhere that serves coffee in the Starbucks venti cups (Duke North Starbucks, DMP cafeteria, Duke South Seattle’s Best).

When I need to drink a cup of coffee in under 5 minutes:  I’m a hot coffee purist, but some time sensitive situations call for iced coffee that you can chug the second you get it- I’m talking about when you have to go watch a procedure or intake a new patient and it’s not okay to have a cup of coffee in hand.  It happens and you need a plan.  You can get iced coffee from the Duke North Starbucks (again, presuming the line isn’t too bad).  The better move is to get iced coffee from Jo Rae Café since their iced coffee is made from a really strong concentrate.  Jo Rae serves their iced coffee over coffee ice cubes, so make sure to say hold the ice cubes (they are however adorable and amazing and totally worth it for times when you have time for them to melt and yield the full benefit there).

When I want the best coffee: NOSH at Jo Rae Café!  Jo Rae has the best coffee in the hospital, but what keeps me semi-jogging there all the time is their amazing staff!  The Jo Rae staff is incredibly friendly and really looks out for us medical students.  They always know when our exams are and which rotations we are all on.  I’m a huge dork and think it is the coolest thing that they know my “usual” (which comes in handy during the lunch rush), but I think it is even cooler when there’s no line and I get to chat with the staff about their days and rock out a bit to the 80’s Pandora station they always have playing.   Duke Med runs on NOSH at Jo Rae.

And there you have it, your Duke Med coffee guide.  As a disclaimer, if any of this seems overly neurotic or aggressive, it probably is and I made no apologies for my lifestyle choices.