Meaningful things: ObertAlvin Coffee House

“We live within a blaze of transience both inevitable and complete,” wrote poet Jane Hirshfield. But as we each wander with temporary legs on temporary roads, we sometimes get to stop and seek respite. We warm our chilled bones by blazing hearths, rest our weary legs at tables open to all, fill our hollow bellies, sip hot coffee and find conversation, community and even comfort in these places and the people who inhabit them. A café is more than a place to make money or serve food; it is a haven where travelers can refuel on journeys long and short. This is one of those places.

Christopher Robin Berge has done many things and gone many places. Cabo Polonio, Uruguay; Tronslo, Norway; Tiger Leaping Gorge, Huan, China; Cluj Napoca, Romania; Jerusalem, Israel, Siem Reip, Cambodia; and Okavango Delta, Botswana, just to name a few. He is a seasoned traveler, and with the ObertAlvin Coffee House at 2969 Main Street in the Village of Blue Mounds, he set out to “build the kind of place I wanted to find while I was on the road.” It opened in July of this year.

“A place where people talk about meaningful things,” he says. It is, he adds, a space where people and ideas can gather and grow.

Berge purchased the building on December 8 of 2023. He started painting the next day and the café today is a space transformed.

While he took a “circuitous route” to this Blue Mounds café, Berge is no Quixotic dreamer. He is one of the more experienced restaurateurs in the Madison area. He played a key role in the success of many of the region’s most beloved and successful eateries, including Magnus, Blue Marlin, Weary Traveler, Barriques and plenty others. Before he got to work restoring and re-envisioning the old Opera House in Blue Mounds – a place of old bones where Houdini likely once performed – he already had 32 years of experience in the business. The building itself was first constructed during a unique period - the Gilded Age in the United States, the Belle Époque in France, and the Victorian era in England. Today, it is a meticulously curated hodgepodge of books, art and architecture, offering everything from copies of Karl Ove Knausgaard’s “My Struggle” hexology, to delicious open-faced ham, herring or fresh vegetable sandwiches and homemade cakes, all along with hot coffee.

“Owning things or a place is a trite assessment of the world,” he says while looking around at the countless design choices that make up the new business. “But owning ideas or art, well…”

“I’m just leaning into something authentic,” he adds.

He likes to (partially) jest about his latest foray into the restaurant world by quoting Mark Twain: “There is nothing to be learned from the second kick of a mule.” After all, the COVID pandemic dealt a horrid blow to many in the industry. But while he is quick to say he’s acutely aware of his own cosmological insignificance, and happy to talk about doom, war, climate, fascism, and every order of human catastrophe past, present and – inevitably, future - he seems incapable of maintaining any real nihilism for more than a passing moment. He always ends up smiling, or making his customers smile as he chats with them.

“Looking into the abyss is a very teachable thing,” he muses.

As regulars return and newcomers discover the Obert Alvin Coffee House each day, Berge greets each of them, and soon they are chatting with him and each other. Coffee flows. Books come and go off the formidable “take one, leave one” library he built on the wall. Faulkner, McCarthy, Marquez, Joyce and more.

“People need decent food, good coffee, a place you can chill out with things about the place you are, stuff to read,” he says.

Wandering through the building, from the concert hall upstairs to the multiple dining areas below and the winding decks and stairs outside, visitors encounter everything from Iggy Pop to Ben Franklin, from a genuine Kazakh wall hanging to a photo of Berge’s grandfather or the Liberty Bell. They might hear the great southern gothic author William Gay quoted in the other room – “the windows lacquered with autumn fire” – or musings on the decadence of the Romanov monarchy contrasted with brutality of the Bolshevik revolution. The lives of Hittites, geography in Argentina, or the Tang Dynasty. Melting glaciers in Greenland or skateboarders in Wisconsin. Strange and wonderful juxtapositions abound.

“I love putting old into new and new into old, chaos into order and order into chaos,” observes Berge. “This is the opposite of CAD (Computer-aided Design). I like tactile things. I like wood. You won’t find marble here, nothing cold, this is warm, saturated with color. And I like things that have meaning.”

“Design has to be playful,” he continues. “Otherwise, it’s not a good public space.”

The vibe at Obert Alvin Coffee House owes credit to “A Pattern Language” by Christopher Alexander, a book that argues people should design for themselves their own houses, streets and communities, based on the idea that individual people are usually best at creating their own beauty and meaning, dreaming up places that blaze, emanating warmth both transient and complete.   

Berge has traveled the world, but his roots are here, and he is here now, too. Just look at the back of his T-Shirt, which proclaims “Blue Mounds: Center of the World.” So, it is for every traveler who passes through the door to grab a cup of coffee, a sandwich, or things a bit more ethereal.

“At one point I kind of tabulated all the things I didn’t do in my life,” he explains. “I didn’t have a family. I didn’t own a car. I didn’t see ‘Must-See TV.’ But I did spend much of my life building restaurants to bring people to me and bring them together. I did this so I could travel without moving.”