Open Eye Café

Yes yes yes, it’s hipsterville. But if you can snag a table at this cool café, you’re in luck. Why?
Well…
–It’s nice and quiet. So I imagine it’s a good place to get some studying done, UNC-​sters!
–The coffee is cheap but good. Can’t beat that!
–There’s easy parking. Phew.
–Tons of seating, but it can get busy. Don’t sweat it, you’ll find a place to park yourself for a few hours.

It’s needless to say that they brew some of the best coffee in town and the ambience although sometimes a bit too loud is great. I would give them 5 stars for that but man they need to improve on the hygiene. I sat outside and I understand people smoke there but it stank cause a little bin that people probably used for dumping cigarette butts looked full. It looked the patio had not been steeped for weeks. And their restrooms where just nasty. Please take care of the premises before you loose customers. There are lots of other options in town now. I know I would be hesitant to go there next time.

I have to agree with a lot of the reviews about the customer service. I go there almost every day and they are consistently unfriendly an apathetic. They seem more interested in conversing with each other and seem offended that you have the gall to interrupt them to place an order. Plus, you would think that ordering the same thing every morning at the same time, after a while they might actually remember my order? Starbucks remembers most of the time and they serve far more customers on an average day. Also, I do agree that management probably doesn’t care about all the bad reviews as they don’t seem to be changing anything.
Like others, I have a love /​hate relationship with this place and am dying to find a good alternative. And yes, the music is WAY too loud, which they also don’t seem to care about. I am even reluctant to give them one star. Let me put it this way: I never write reviews for places, but Open Eye is so grating that I feel compelled to air out my complaints. Maybe the barristas, especially Katie (I believer her name is) feels that since is she is very pretty that she can be apathetic and unfriendly and it doesn’t matter. Well, guess what, Katie, it does matter. You’re nice to look at but seem like a coarse person in terms of customer service.

I come here to escape my roommate, study, and drink iced Americanos. They don’t have much food, but their pastries/​desserts are all very good. Chill atmosphere. Solid music selections. Stays open late. Friendly staff.
Beware of the outlets… not all of them are in working condition. The art is kind of shitty in a Portlandia «bad art, good walls» way.

I agree with the rest of the reviews that the furniture is not the best, but this gives them a different style. No matter what, they have good coffee and good music, and good atmosphere to work on whatever you need to work on. There are couple of things that they can do to make it even better: Add used books here and there for people just to read while they are at the café, and please change your coffee cups for large coffee. With the current one, coffee gets cold very fast.

I really want to give Open Eye a glowing review, but their customer service is awful (with the occasional exception, which I always appreciate)! I’m shocked at how prevalent that specific complaint is across Unilocal and yet nothing has been done to change it. It makes me wonder if management cares at all about the faces and voices that represent their café. On the flip side, I do enjoy their espresso and teas, and the music is generally pretty good! I like working and studying here, but the staff are definitely one of the café’s biggest downfalls.

Great coffee shop! The environment here is second to none — whenever I come home to Chapel Hill this is the best place to get work done by a mile.
Coffee is high quality and not *ridiculous* by coffee shop standards. Baked goods are pretty delicious too! I can’t think of a better coffee shop in the Triangle.

Fine coffee, but to be honest the people who work there are not friendly at all. I used to think it was just me, but then I consulted other friends. Turns out, alas, they are assholes to everybody.

Pros:
You have not lived until you have tried the Espresso Shake. Their Hot Chocolate is good too. Coffee is great-​tasting but pricey.
Cons:
The rude employees whose lack of hospitality in a hospitality-​driven industry is replaced by looks of apathy. I am a frequent consumer of Open Eye due to its’ central location and general ambiance. However, be weary when approaching the bar, the baristas and cashier have attitudes 90% of the time I visit. This is why I do not tip them!
But that Espresso Shake though…

This used to be my hangout. I loved the place. Until one day — the owner made a very condescending, sexist remark when I requested a coffee that Open Eye apparently didn’t have. He told me in essence 1) You don’t know what you’re talking about 2) he was going to correct my thinking 3) then told me I really wanted something else. What a complete *sswipe.
NOT COOL. That was it for me. I haven’t been back there in several years (and don’t plan to). I started going to Jessee’s instead and never encountered any snark or condescension.

Cute local coffee shop with a great vibe that matches the feel of the area. There is sufficient seating and feels a little like several coffee shops in Seattle. They happened to have pretty loud music playing, which seemed a little aggressive for a Sunday morning, but added to the funky vibe, so I rolled with it.
Ordered the americano and was very smooth and easy to drink even without my usual milk and sugar. Small but good selection of pastries available for purchase, but mostly sweet and not really any savory options.

This is — or at least was — my go-​to coffee shop for studying. Always plenty of seating, reliable wifi, nearby parking, and generally not too noisy (depending on where you are seated relative to the speakers).
I will say that compared to my undergraduate years (when dinosaurs roamed), this place definitely got pretty popular with students and therefore you may not get ideal seating at every visit. Sure, the espresso drinks are overpriced (basic lattes start at $ 4), but that doesn’t really affect me since I usually go with friends and split a large tea for $ 5. The baristas are always sweet and happy to refill with hot water for when it’s one of those nights!
I agree with other Unilocal reviewers that the outlets are not always reliable (especially with holding onto my macbook charger prongs), but all in all this place still holds up as a solid place to hang out or get work done. For more serious endeavors, students will always have campus libraries anyways!
Thanks Open Eye for the memories!

I have a love-​hate relationship with this place. And yes, I’m sitting there right now typing this ranting review.
As with every hipster coffee shop, the food and beverages are overpriced, the food tastes mediocre, and the coffee is at least pretty decent (which is nice).
This places loses the most points for the inevitable: outlets. As with most non-​franchise coffee shops in the Chapel Hill /​Carrboro area, the outlets are rare. HOWEVER, the WORST part of the outlets is that the prongs sometimes do not stay well inside the outlet so they may get disconnected easily. All I’m saying is: not only they have few outlets and the food items are overprices, but some of the outlets they have are difficult to use.
Other than that… There is a lot of seating space, comfortable couches, people to watch, and plenty of (free) parking, plus there is free internet in this entire town.

Lots of memory at this café. Beside the amazing Chai, and drip coffee they have, I also love the atmosphere most of the time. Personal favorite is to get there early, get a pot of tea, a fresh slice of pastry (or fruit tart), find a nice place to sit and stay there for hours.
The service is kind of hit and miss from time to time, where you could have the warmest person or the most aloof person, but I am not really there for the service anyway. Especially, don’t go there at night when there is live music if you just want some place quiet to study.
Open eye will always hold a dear place in my heart.

In the five years since I first reviewed Open Eye, I’ve become increasingly disillusioned with it. The staff gets crankier and more rude (there are a couple of notable exceptions), the furniture gets dirtier and less comfortable, and they haven’t addressed the problem of direct sunlight pouring in a certain times of day. (Open Eye folks-​check out the great shades Jessee’s, your competitor, has.) I’m in my mid-​thirties now – dirty chic no longer works. I want clean, comfortable, with exceptional service for my hard-​earned dollars.
The espresso is still delicious (that earned you all three of your stars), but I can also get delicious espresso at Jessee’s and a number of other places.
Your drip coffee is fine, but I can get a fantastic pour over at Vinyl Perk for the same price.
Shape up, Open Eye. It’s not 2003 any longer.

I recently moved to Carrboro and was looking for a good coffee shop to work from in the mornings and Open Eye was the closest commute. Looking at the reviews it seemed like people either overwhelmingly love the place or think it’s on part with NYC snobbery. Here is my take…
The barrista’s are all good at what they do. Some are cheerful and helpful while a few are somewhat indifferent in their attitude. I’ve not once had a negative experience with one after frequenting the place for 3 weeks.
The seating is pretty great. From the outside it looks like a smaller shop but inside it stretches out like the tardis. There are plenty of plugs but there are so plenty of people to take them so be prepared!
I can’t speak to the coffee but the espresso is quite good. It’s smooth and a slight bit chocolaty and no real signs of over roasting. I keep coming back to the americano.
Pastries are also really good but the selection varies day to day so if you find a mainstay you may have to veer from it about a third of the time.
Overall it’s a great shop with great drinks and tasty baked goods. Don’t be offended if you are not always welcomed with a smile but you’ll get smiles on some days.

Very good coffee shop. Espresso and pour overs are excellent, coffee is roasted in house. It is a notch off of the best roasted coffee in the country (Intelligentsia, Counter Culture, etc.) but it is still very good and baristas (baristi?) work magic with it.
Plenty of seating, free wifi (courtesy of Town of Carrboro), good selection of baked good and all the fascinating people watching you could hope for.

This is not like your average coffee shop where you have few chairs and nice sofas with pandora/​spotify/​local radio playing in the background. The décor will surely surprise you. On looking closely, I realized that the chairs/​tables/​sofas are all scavenged stuff. They have remodeled a park bench. Some of the sofas are for the daring ones. I didn’t take a chance on those. For music, they had indian sitar and tabla (percussion instrument) jugalbandi playing in the background.
They had some good pastries which we didn’t have the appetite for. The staff were very kind and patient in explaining the different kind of teas they have and tried their best in describing their flavors. I like my cappuccino. What surprised me was that.
Bottomline: Surprising décor, good coffee and tea and few dirty sofas.

DISCLAIMER: The only thing I can comment on is the pastries, since I did not try any coffee.
However, oh, those pastries. They told us that they were made by a Paris-​trained pastry chef, and that is very easy to believe. I had a salted caramel macaron and a chocolate one. These just blew the pants off any macaron I’ve had anywhere else, ever, and I’ve been to France twice.
The caramel one was intensely buttery and caramel-​y without being sticky or heavy, and the chocolate one was a proper ganache, not some kind of wimpy frosting that someone called a «butter crème.» The meringues on the outside were a basket of contradictions, as a meringue should be – crunchy and chewy and crumbly and sticky all at once. I could have eaten a dozen of them.
I wish I could say more about the other offerings, but I can say this – it’s worth coming to OEC for the pastries alone. You will be happy.

Wow is this space busy. All the students were in here studying and so it was tough to find a spot to sit. Which doesn’t mean the space is small… it actually has a ton of seating but we were there during finals week.
I definitely didn’t hear any music while I was there. But I also didn’t get the ugly looks from studying folks since my friends and I were there to take a breather and chat. So bonus points for tolerance.
My hot chocolate was OK but not great. My friends enjoyed their coffee and beer so, yay, for carrying more than coffee.

It’s way too loud here with regards to the music, the chairs are uncomfortable and awkward, the options are inferior to those at other coffee places in Carrboro, and there are too many plugs where your cord will fall out of the plug.
So I’m lowering my review. Maybe I’m getting old and ornery? I dunno. All I know is that I cannot get work done at Open Eye.
Also that sun glare during the midday is no fun.