SM Café

The opening transports you to a seedy part of town. It’s like the first time you went into a strip club. It doesn’t smell like a strip club with all the talents smelling like "bath and body work" fruity lotions and vanillas. What I mean is, it triggers that forbidden, sinful, part of your soul that you get when you’re doing something that you were told not to do like a Catholic 7th grader jerking one out for the first time. Theres a burning smell. There’s a sense that you’re in the wrong place, a part of the city that’s been in front of you for you tucked in an alley. This world wasn’t meant for you. A year later, returning back to the fragrance, I now am a customer. I can drink my coffee casually while public sex surrounds me. Nipple slips from the staff goes unphased. Asian men in their 60’s read the paper printed in their native language smokies comfortably. They give the orders. You can tell by their behavior and the way they seem to have eyes all around the room. The dry down reminds me of incense. Incense that’s been out, but the burnt air still hangs around. It’s not an accord listed, so it’s the blend of the accords that give me this feeling. Where others have said that this was a beast lashing your nose, I found that this is a subtle scent. It stays within inches of your being. I had to buy it. I had to because it’s in our nature to feed our shadows once in a while.

My second sampling from Strangers Parfumerie is SM Café, another coffee-named/laden entry (like Caffeine Honey, which inspired me to look into the brand), except, unlike the very sweet Caffeine Honey with, SM Café is more of a woody, spicy, leathery blend, certainly with some sweetness and coffee, but not so much a gourmand. The woody/spicy aspects are fairly well balanced against the dark coffee, too, with standout notes of leather/suede, cade, lavender, cedar, and resins. It vaguely reminds me of 4160 Tuesdays Black Velvet Café, but spicier, maybe leaning more toward the leather chairs and spicy foods of the café, rather than the inner oaky ambience. Certainly SM Café offers something for coffee lovers who nonetheless want to stay out of gourmand territory. The sweetness in it is pretty faint. There’s a maraschino cherry note, but to me this only exists in a cherry wood concept that is subtly part of the cedar. Overall, I think SM Café is very well done, and performs quite well, also, slightly more strongly than Caffeine Honey, and even if CH is a little more my speed, SM Café would be nice to own, I dare say. SM Café is priced for $80 for 30ml in EDP concentration, and is sold in the US via Luckyscent and Canada via Indiescents, both great sites that ship internationally. 8 out of 10

SM Café reminds me of a Portland, Oregon hipster coffee shop, with its coffee and leather and “scent of place” vibes. I picture a fluorescent-bulb-lit pastry case with semi-fresh pastries, coffee, studying, plants in need of water, and flyers messily pinned to cork boards. It also smells like the day-after-debauchery bars that smell like someone tried to clean away the sins, complete with quietly whirring air ducts, and a hint of mopping up. The scent of hippy glassware shops and adult bookstore also springs to mind. I also get the 80s animalic powerhouse Quorum with a dollop of amaretto coffee on top sometimes. Very evocative fragrance. I think it’s brilliant but also somewhat disorienting and uncomfy.

Grab yourselves a cup of coffee and dark chocolate and enjoy this beautiful creation by Strangers Parfumerie. Dark, rich, roasted coffee opening followed by woody and sweet facets (mainly honey&vanilla) and a little bit of tobacco in the background as the scent dries down. This is how a coffee based scent should smell like imo, perfect balance between dark and sweet sides. My only complaint would be about the performance, i expect these 30 ml bottles to have more strength because i don’t want to run out of this beauty quickly..

Agree with DR521 below. It's mainly strong coffee, but has a ton of other stuff going on to keep it interesting. What sticks out for me is a strong, bitter booze smell as well, which makes it kind of an Irish coffee thing. Brings to mind a long day of traveling, in airports and on planes, where you're downing strong liquids to get through the process. Exotic and far-flung. If I were to choose a coffee fragrance, this would certainly be the one.