Koko Lists
Start a new list
Log in
Sign up
← New random battle
Koko Battle
Tap your pick.
The Wormhole Coffee
The Wormhole Coffee's original Wicker Park location leans fully into an 1980s theme — vintage arcade cabinets, retro decor, and a genuinely playful atmosphere built around nostalgia rather than the minimalist aesthetic most specialty coffee shops default to. It's one of the more distinctive cafés in a neighborhood that already has plenty of competition for attention. The concept proved successful enough that the owners opened a second location nearby with a different theme — a 1990s-themed "Wormhole 2" a few blocks away — extending the retro-decade bit into a small mini-franchise built entirely around nostalgia branding rather than differentiated coffee programs. That second location closed in 2022, a casualty of rising rent that the shop's owners were candid about in local coverage, but the original 80s-themed Wicker Park café has remained open and continues to be the location most associated with the Wormhole name. Underneath the theme, the coffee program itself is a straightforward, well-regarded specialty operation — the arcade cabinets and retro signage are the hook, but the espresso and drip program are what's kept regulars coming back on their own merits rather than just for the novelty of the setting. The closure of Wormhole 2 is a useful reminder of how difficult it is to run a themed concept at more than one location — a nostalgia gimmick that reads as charming and specific in one storefront can start to feel like a diluted franchise formula the moment it's replicated with a different decade slapped on, and the owners' decision to let the second location go rather than force it to work says something about their priorities. The original Wicker Park shop, at least, has had two decades to get the balance between theme and substance exactly right. The Wormhole was founded in June 2010 by a group of former IT professionals, including co-founder James Tillapaugh, who restored the café's signature DeLorean himself — a full-scale replica of the time machine from Back to the Future, complete with an "OUTATIME" license plate and working time-circuit details, that's become the shop's most-photographed feature. Underneath the theme, the shop's coffee program runs on HalfWit Coffee Roasters, a roasting operation launched by Wormhole owner Travis Schaffner in partnership with Gaslight Roasters — meaning the café's beans come from a genuine collaboration between two of the neighborhood's more established coffee names rather than a generic in-house label slapped on for branding purposes. That pairing of a serious roasting partnership with an unapologetically silly interior is part of what's let the Wormhole hold its own against more minimalist, design-forward competitors in Wicker Park for over a decade. For a Chicago coffee list, The Wormhole is the essential "genuinely fun to just be in" entry — an 80s-themed Wicker Park café with real coffee chops underneath the nostalgia, proof that a specialty coffee shop can lean fully into a gimmick without letting the coffee itself become an afterthought.
VS
Dark Matter Coffee (Star Lounge)
Star Lounge Coffee Bar is the original café of Dark Matter Coffee — the birthplace of the brand, not just one location among several. Dark Matter now roasts and sells coffee out of eight locations around Chicago, but Star Lounge, in the West Town neighborhood, is where the company's identity was actually built, and it's still described by regulars as the bohemian anchor of the West Side's café scene. Dark Matter roasts its coffee in small eight-pound batches directly above the Star Lounge café, chasing unusual and intense flavor profiles that have drawn real attention from Chicago-area restaurants looking to serve something distinct from more conservative third-wave roasting. The Shiratado, one of the brand's signature drinks, was created in Star Lounge's early years — a house creation that's stayed on the menu as the café expanded into a much larger operation. The café's whole aesthetic leans into the "bohemian third place" identity deliberately — art, music, and a genuinely lived-in feel rather than a polished specialty-coffee showroom, which sets it apart from more minimalist competitors even as Dark Matter's coffee itself has become nationally recognized and wholesaled to restaurants well beyond Chicago. That contrast between Star Lounge's scrappy, art-filled interior and the technical seriousness of the roasting happening one floor above is a big part of what makes the café distinct — most roasters chasing genuinely unusual flavor profiles present themselves with a more clinical, lab-like aesthetic, while Dark Matter has kept its founding café feeling like a hangout first and a showcase for the roasting program second, even as that program has grown into an eight-location operation. Dark Matter's founder, Jesse Diaz, opened Star Lounge in August 2007 in what was then Chicago's Ukrainian Village, initially just running it as a café before deciding, by early 2008, that he wanted to roast the coffee himself rather than buy from an outside roaster — the decision that turned Star Lounge from a neighborhood coffee bar into the seed of an actual roasting company. Within Dark Matter's first year, the team developed two blends, A Love Supreme and Unicorn Blood, that drew outsized critical attention for a brand-new roaster and helped establish the company's reputation for bold, unconventional flavor profiles right out of the gate. Diaz has since built out a dedicated roastery, an iced-coffee production facility, and even a separate chocolate operation, and in 2025 Dark Matter opened its first location outside Chicago, on the Bowery in New York City — expansion that traces directly back to the West Town café where the whole project started. For a Chicago coffee list, Star Lounge is the essential "birthplace of a now-major roaster" entry — the original café behind a brand that's since expanded to eight locations, still serving small-batch, intensely flavored coffee out of the same West Town storefront where Dark Matter started.
Next battle
Full comparison
About The Wormhole Coffee
About Dark Matter Coffee (Star Lounge)
Popular Battles
1984 vs. Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone
1 votes
Friends vs. Curb Your Enthusiasm
1 votes
Ideogram vs. Sora
1 votes
Navy Pier vs. Bishop Museum
1 votes
Rockin' Around the Christmas Tree vs. Skittles
1 votes
George Carlin vs. Oprah Winfrey
1 votes
