FOLK Coffee & Vintage

Folk opened at 5668 N Clark St in November 2023, when Ryan Smith and Safiyah Uddin - then customers of the long-running Andersonville antique store Roost - went into business with its former owner after Roost closed following nearly fifteen years on the strip. Smith and Uddin are now the sole owners, and in late March 2026 they added the cafe they had been planning, renaming the business Folk Coffee & Vintage. The Clark Street corridor already had at least six coffee shops, including The Coffee Studio, The Understudy and Colectivo, so the pair built the menu around what none of them served. "We wanted to go into something that was a little more slow-brewed, a little more traditional," Smith told Block Club Chicago. "We have drinks that you can't get at other places."

The most concrete expression of that is the absence of an espresso machine. Coffee and tea are made instead in a cezve, the long-handled Turkish pot, heated on a hot plate and strained before serving. The list is short and international: Yemeni coffee at $6, made with Yemeni cardamom coffee steeped in milk or water; a menengic at $6, the Kurdish pistachio coffee sweetened with sugar; a cafe de olla at $6, Mexican-style with cinnamon, brown sugar and warm spices; iced options including cold brew, an iced London fog and an iced Adeni, the Yemeni-style black tea; and pour-over at $5 using beans from Ceramic Coffee Roasters. Seating is limited to a few barstools on purpose - Smith wanted people who came for coffee to browse the vintage furniture, artwork, decor and clothing, and vice versa. Nothing alcoholic is served, and the room closes at 6pm, so this is a daytime third place rather than a night out, but it is a genuinely distinctive alcohol-free stop in a neighborhood dominated by bars.