Espresso News and Reviews – TheShot.coffeeratings.com

Recently we have been thinking about all the great, Top-20-caliber SF coffee bars that have opened up in recent years. So much so that the news of a great new espresso bar opening in town is thankfully becoming a little monotonous. With all the great coffee now available, we thought we could all use a helpful reminder of how bad things can get.

For anyone who watches a TV program involving food these days, there’s the tiresome, obligatory money shot of the chef or host sampling a dish, smirking to the camera after a mouthful, and exclaiming “Mmmmm, that’s delicious!” It’s never, “Ick! What’s that weird texture?,” or “Do you taste something metallic?,” or “I don’t think I’ll be coming here again.” With no sense of balance, it’s nearly impossible to truly appreciate the good stuff.

So where to find SF espresso’s misery market — the coffee shop equivalent of bumwine.com? (A favorite site of ours, btw.) While inside Farm:Table earlier this week, the four-packs of Café Bustelo on display were more trash-as-treasure than, say, the outright trash we were seeking. So we walked a few blocks from there into the heart of the Tenderloin and encountered a temple of physical self-abuse we could not resist: the L.A. Café at Turk and Jones Sts.

While it’s too easy to speak ill of the Tenderloin and its many disadvantaged and addled residents, there are few blocks in the city where you can view an Airstream trailer parked on the roof of a four-story building — just past a faded outdoor wall painting advertising 7up and “transient rooms” (see photo above). And yet this is hardly one of the Tenderloin’s worst intersections.

Everything about the place screamed, “Run! Don’t walk!” But even if going into a place like this to sample the espresso requires a mental state akin to donating your body to science, we couldn’t help ourselves. Even if we risked nightmares and waking up from our fitful sleep in cold sweats thinking about the place afterward.

Where to begin? The corner entrance has no fewer than two signs designating it as an emergency exit only. There are also no fewer than two “No Trespassing” signs posted by the SF police in their store windows — to deter vagrancy. So you have to walk inside via a side entrance further down Jones St.

Once inside, it looks like any Happy Donuts/Sad Espresso chain, with its plain tables and chairs. But this is misery coffee at its finest — complete with the very same neon coffee sign you can ironically find at China Basin’s The Creamery.

At the far end of the café was a drugged-out, hooded Dave Chappelle look-alike who, perched over a table, did not move during the 30 minutes we were inside. The rest of the clientele who came in and out sported either gold teeth or wheelchairs, if not both. The pastries are covered in plastic, and the owners sport a Vietnamese calendar advertising bail bonds. If this is called “L.A. Café”, it’s clearly modeled more after downtown Broadway than Hollywood.

Using a two-group Astoria machine with the portafilter handles left out cooling in the drip tray, they pull surprisingly short shots of “espresso” that look and taste more like water than anything else. And, no surprise, they serve one of SF’s finest examples of ghetto coffee: America’s Best Coffee. Their homeopathic espresso comes coated with a balding layer of almost white-pale crema and tastes neither bitter nor ashy — nor much like anything at all. At a steep $1.75 price, we have to figure that the owners are gouging like anyone else trying to make a living in this neighborhood.

Currently L.A. Café is ranked tied for 609th place among SF’s best espresso shots, but it’s not the worst by a longshot. Scarier is that their 2.40 coffee rating still significantly trumps their 1.50 café rating, thus tying L.A. Café with an aforementioned Happy Donuts for SF’s third worst in the café rating category.

Read the review of L.A. Café.

After our sordid and tasteless espresso experience at L.A. Café, we could only think of this following sordid and tasteless video of Vince, the hooker-beating ShamWow guy, and how he hates L.A.:

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Australians are no slouches when it comes to appreciating good coffee. But last month, an opinion piece in The Australian highlighted what the author, John Lethlean, felt was a lot of misplaced fuss, pomp, and circumstance going into coffee origins these days: Just a strong one, thanks | The Australian.

A self-described “coffee-geek groupie,” Mr. Lethlean appreciates the energy and dedication behind the many nuances of “single origin”, “estate-grown”, and “cupping”. However, he refuses to play along. Why? In the end, many of these subtle shades of variation don’t make all that much difference to him — particularly when contrasted with the impact a barista can have preparing an end result espresso.

Mr. Lethlean also reaches out to the inevitable wine analogy. But even there, he points out, few wine consumers can discern subtle differences of terroir, variety, harvest condition, and method — and even fewer consumers can do the same with their coffee.

We agree with many of Mr. Lethlean’s sentiments. His article reminded us of what we recently wrote about the recent obsession with origins and “maximizing adjectives”: that it reflects a current trend intensely focused on experimentation over a more learned enjoyment. However, our society has yet to simplify a single consumable after fragmenting its market — whether soda, yogurt, or orange juice. So even as consumer interest in coffee experimentation could potentially wane, we still expect the adjective parade to live on.

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An Op-Ed piece in Monday’s Washington Post noted the curious phenomenon of local culture that is exported, reinterpreted abroad, and then imported back again. The article’s topic was the wildly received recent openings of Starbucks cafés in cities such as Warsaw and Prague — with the backdrop of their centuries-old coffeehouse culture traditions: Anne Applebaum – A Starbucks State of Mind – washingtonpost.com.

We’ve witnessed this phenomenon before with the all-American burger joint/diner. A little over a decade ago, these establishments rose in popularity as a cultural export within a number of Southeast Asian cities, such as Taipei, Singapore, and Hong Kong. Several years later, imported versions of these Asian-flavored burger joints showed up in Southern California. (You could always tell when curry powder, pickled cucumbers, and vinegar made their way into the menu.) So why would Starbucks be greeted like coffeehouse “liberators” in Eastern Europe — while many Westerners now view the brand as an overpriced, jumped-the-shark, frivolous luxury that diluted its quality in pursuit of industrialized mass production?

The article’s author notes that the stylish Eastern European cafés of the 19th century served as island respites from dreary conditions at home and an opportunity to aspire to the comforts of the upper classes. Today, after the European café of old was exported to Seattle and transformed into a culture of vapid Sting CDs and gargantuan milkshakes sloshed into to-go paper cups, Starbucks arrival in cities such as Warsaw and Prague once again represents the opportunity to aspire to the world’s upwardly mobile classes in the shadow of Communism’s collapse.

1995: Seattle First Invades Prague

The author also makes mention of Eastern Europe’s preceding decade of Starbucks knock-offs, which reminded me of when I visited Prague in 1995. Back then, Prague was in the throes of its post-Communism reconstruction and remodeling phase. A layer of dust covered the city, and it seemed like PVC pipe was sold on every corner. (I remember remarking at the time how I could have made a killing opening a Home Depot chain there.)

I quickly became a regular at a coffee shop in the historic Staré Město district called Pražská Káva — or, quite simply, “Prague Coffee” — located at U-Zlatého-hada (or “at the golden snake” in Prague’s historic addressing system, and today on a street named Karlova, just across the Charles Bridge). They boasted “Seattle style lattes.” While Starbucks was still largely an unknown there in 1995, the Western appeal for “Seattle style” coffee beverages was clear to anyone who collected money from American tourists. Having been in Seattle just a few months prior, I was actually quite surprised how well Pražská Káva’s lattes measured up to their Seattle counterparts — and how you could get a good espresso in town for only about 20-25 Kč (about $1 U.S. at today’s exchange rates).

Oddly, that was probably the first café I ever gravitated towards just for the quality of their espresso. Although I found the espresso quality around Prague to be generally quite decent at the time, I also suffered my worst coffee experience ever in Prague — a styrofoam cup of traditional Czech “coffee” purchased at the Vyšehrad castle, which I can only describe as grainy sawdust suspended in hot water.

Sadly, Pražská Káva was replaced years ago by a hotel and restaurant. We suspect that today’s infiltration of Starbucks there will do more to lower the imported “Seattle style” standards that Pražská Káva once held.

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Yesterday, Washington DC’s local blog, We Love DC, posted an article on what they consider one of D.C.’s greatest coffee culture challenges: the survival of good independent cafés. To help remedy the problem, the post includes a few promotional suggestions for the area: We Love DC » Blog Archive » We Love Drinks: Coffee Culture.

The post’s author, Jenn Larson, is on a mission we can relate to — given that we started what eventually became CoffeeRatings.com in 2002 to raise awareness of better espresso standards and the good, independent places where you can consume it. Earlier this month, Ms. Larson also lamented the death-by-drowning-in-milk of the American cappuccino — a subject long dear to our taste buds: We Love DC » Blog Archive » “This is NOT a cappuccino”.

We’ve written previously about D.C.’s challenges with good coffee. The transitional status of Murky Coffee hasn’t helped either. Twenty years ago, I was living in the D.C. area myself. The coffee was terrible; the Starbucks invasion was still years away. But right after the first recognizable cappuccino I had — in Berkeley, CA — I immediately moved there. Coincidence?

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A couple weeks back we visited this café with Tim of espressophile fame. Approaching its North Beach location, you wouldn’t think it would be much different from the others nearby — but you’d be wrong. The espresso here is a real standout in the neighborhood, coinciding with the ownership change in late 2008 to Alex and Jessie.

North Beach may be credited as a sort of ground zero for the historical introduction of espresso in America (or at least west of the Mississippi). But unfortunately the espresso standards in North Beach seemed to have evolved little beyond those pioneer days: a heavy dependence on beans roasted too darkly for any brightness or balance, little regard for roast freshness, and a slack and often haphazard approach to barista skills. It’s little surprise that, in recent years, we’ve seen the rise of better espresso standards in neighborhoods such as the Mission — culturally rich ethnic neighborhoods of growing economic means, much like the North Beach of its time.

While neighborhood staples such as Caffé Trieste and Caffè Greco have stagnated, Cafe Capriccio marks a neighborhood return to the practice of making great espresso.

This corner café has red-and-white-striped awnings (complete with icicle lights), sidewalk tables, and many mirrors inside a small space with a few dark tables. The clientele here are generally quiet and studious. Using an organic Ecco Caffè espresso blend and a new three-group Nuova Simonelli, they pull pretty shots with mottled dark brown crema with reddish flecks.

Ordering a few shots here, the consistency wasn’t perfect (the crema on some was lighter) — but it looks serious and has a good consistency, thickness, and persistence. A shot close to our hearts, it has a thick, almost syrupy body: potent, dense. Flavorwise, it is well-balanced (a true espresso blend), smooth, shows pungent strength, and finishes with a sweeter edge. A very pleasant surprise, and one of the finest espresso examples in town. North Beach is relevant again.

Read the review of Cafe Capriccio.

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We had originally posted this as an addendum to our recent review of the new, more permanent installment of the Blue Bottle Coffee Co. in the Ferry Building Marketplace. However, the strange phenomenon of the Gibraltar deserves its very own post. Originating here in San Francisco, the Gibraltar has since spread to Los Angeles (Intelligentsia Coffee & Tea), New York (Café Grumpy), and now London (Climpson & Sons). The purpose of this post is to demystify, debunk, and, well, defrock the Gibraltar before the misconceptions behind this invasive species are allowed to propagate any further.

So what is the Gibraltar? Technically speaking, it’s the registered name for a line of glassware tumblers from Ohio-based Libbey Inc..

So what does any of this have to do with coffee? Prior to opening Blue Bottle Coffee Co.’s first SF café in Hayes Valley in January 2005, owner James Freeman experimented and tuned variables for his café by making cappuccinos in 4.5-oz versions of these cheap restaurant supply glasses. He offered these practice runs to his staff and to employees of the Dark Garden corset shop down the street.

Word of mouth spread, and these test beverages needed a name. Steve Ford, then a barista and roasting colleague of James at Blue Bottle (and now head roaster at Ritual Coffee Roasters), apparently found inspiration from the packaging for these glasses. Thus the Gibraltar was born out of a combination of happenstance and an inside joke. Except now the joke has gone global.

Sarsaparilla — in a dirty glass

We chalk up the rise of the Gibraltar as one of coffee’s more pointless creations — an artifact of America’s milk-engorged bastardization of the standard cappuccino.

Why? Because the 4.5-oz Gibraltar glass is redundant with the regulation 4.75-oz ceramic cappuccino cup. (James obviously knew this when he started his experiments.) Both are sufficient for containing the 150-ml Italian regulation cappuccino. Except that the ceramic cup is explicitly designed with thermal and aesthetic properties for consuming a cappuccino.

The problem is that few people in America have experienced a true, regulation cappuccino. As illustrated in the photos below — comparing a medium cappuccino from Peet’s Coffee & Tea with a 4.75-oz regulation Intelligentsia-branded cappuccino cup — Americans drown their cappuccino in so much milk that the typical cappuccino technically qualifies as a caffè latte (latte being Italian for “milk”).

When preciousness is valued more than quality

So when a local food & fashion magazine such as 7×7 says that the Gibraltar is a “MUST ORDER” at Blue Bottle Cafe, and that it ranks #28 on the “100 Things to Try Before You Die”, this is basically shorthand for, “We’ve never had a properly made regulation cappuccino in our lives, so we’re willing to worship it in a cheap restaurant supply glass.”

It’s things like this that make it easy to be cynical about consumer behavior, particularly among self-described foodies. We would dismiss this misplaced (and misinformed) obsession with the Gibraltar as just a lone opinion in 7×7 magazine, but we personally know too many knowledgeable people working professionally in the quality food business who also contribute to the Gibraltar’s cult-like status.

Where’s the harm in that, you say? We’ve long lamented that genius chefs are often coffee fools, but many of these food writers and bloggers serve the role of influencers and arbiters of taste. Trouble arises when they spend more energy trying to be precious than focusing on quality.

The trap of this preciousness is the illusion of exclusivity. This makes the Gibraltar a cousin of what we’ve previously called the Malaysian street food experience: cafés that serve espresso out of the alleyways of heroin deals, stripping themselves of all customer amenities, to fabricate an image of exclusivity. The Gibraltar grew out of behind-the-scenes experimentation carried out in a Hayes Valley alleyway, and to this day the Gibraltar has never been featured on a Blue Bottle coffee menu — even though Blue Bottle’s espresso machines sport stacks of Gibraltar glasses in anticipation of the inevitable orders. (Mr. Freeman doesn’t receive enough credit for his clever marketing savvy, even if the cult of the Gibraltar was far from his intentions.)

So instead of encouraging people to enjoy a proper espresso drink served in a proper cup, this desire for the illusion of exclusivity ends up proliferating ignorance (about the existence of the regulation cappuccino) and trumping a better sensory experience (drinking out of cappuccino cups instead of cheap restaurant supply glasses). The next thing you know, the Gibraltar — and not the regulation cappuccino — is being held up as a standard in London cafés.

In an article from London posted last month on this subject, Steve Ford put it this way:

I’ve never really talked about the Gibraltar for publication, partly because I think it was very much of a time and place – that being the Bay Area circa 2005. The fact that I’m talking about it now is mostly because I’ve given up on the original idea. There WAS something special about it back then. Now, it’s just another drink on the menu to me, and like so many cappuccinos, generally prepared poorly or just wrong. Every year people ask about it, so I can track how far the idea has gone, but the fact that it’s all the way in the UK and I have no idea how it got there is disappointing. And not to be too melodramatic, but I feel like the soul of the drink has been lost. It used to be something unique, and now it’s just another piece of fucking latte art.

There you have it: the Gibraltar as the Fool’s Cappuccino. James Freeman, always looking at the bright side, still offers Gibraltars in his cafés “off the menu” because he sees demand for it as a way of weaning people off paper cups and overly milky caffè lattes. But for some of us, the Gibraltar represents a faddish Band-Aid for how badly America screwed up the cappuccino.

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Opening this past Thursday (April 2, 2009) after a long wait for Blue Bottle to expand the production of their roasting operations, this café technically marks the third and fourth Blue Bottle stations in operation at the Ferry Building Marketplace on a busy weekend. But this is the first with more permanent (i.e., no cart) space. They have dedicated a bit of shelf space to a variety of coffee-making accessories, from Mazzer Mini grinders ($700) through tiny French presses — plus a lot of retail roasted coffee.

Unlike the two carts outside during farmer’s market days, inside here they offer two service stations around the corner from each other. One uses a three-group La Marzocco Linea, the other a fully manual Mirage Triplette three-group lever machine (the latter rated here). While you can find Kees Van Der Westen-designed espresso machines at Four Barrel, we were a little surprised to find Blue Bottle sporting one here. It’s a little out of character, though not as hot-rod flashy as Four Barrel’s setup. (Though they did omit the Mirage branding and chose a classic lever machine: very much the classicist’s touches for a very modern machine.)

Line waits and SF’s elastic demand for Blue Bottle Coffee

Both espresso stations also offer made-to-order filter drip coffee. There is limited stool seating along the Mirage espresso bar in front and a corner counter on wheels nearby: sparse by most standards, but ample for the Ferry Building. And on weekends with all four Blue Bottle stations running full-throttle, service speeds are still glacial — with modest-sized lines still taking an inordinate amount of time to process. Waits of 15-25 minutes from line-to-serving are typical.

On the one hand, we appreciate that you cannot rush good coffee. For Blue Bottle to be running four, count ‘em, four coffee stations simultaneously at the Ferry Building Marketplace is almost unheard of. And yet they still cannot keep up with demand; customers put up with a lot to get their coffee. Perhaps that’s just the bizarre nature of the San Francisco resident: we oddly always seem happy to spend countless hours in line on weekend mornings for our favorite coffee and brunch spots. In any case, Blue Bottle is proving that they have an elastic demand similar to Internet bandwidth and freeway construction: the greater the supply, the higher the demand.

And when your espresso finally arrives…

They serve espresso shots with a mottled dark and medium brown crema — it’s rich with a just-as-rich aroma. There’s a real potency in the cup: a cloves-like edge and a robust sweetness that rounds out the bottom of the smoky cup. Worth the wait? For many of us, certainly.

For the few customers who order their coffee “for here”, they use brown Heath ceramic cups — revered among the Bay Area’s food-obsessed (e.g., standard at restaurants such as Coi and Chez Panisse), but they don’t seem as functional for espresso as a classic brown ACF of Nuova Point cup. But it sure beats paper. Why so many people would be offended to drink a $6 serving of wine out of a paper cup, but not their $4 latte, is still beyond our comprehension.

In addition to offering Heath ceramics, of course, the warming tops of Blue Bottle’s espresso machines are also decorated with 4.5-oz Gibraltar glasses — for those unfamiliar with the regulation cappuccino and the (far preferable) regulation 4.75-oz ceramic cup it is served in. But we’ll save our “contempt” for the Gibraltar in another post.

Read the review of the Blue Bottle Coffee Co. inside the Ferry Building Marketplace.

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Since we visited a few notable Peninsula cafés at the beginning of the year, some locals mentioned this neighborhood café. Il Piccolo Caffé has been in operation since 1990, and it has survived in the suburbs despite a Starbucks moving across the street in 2004.

It adds a bit of local character as an Italian-themed coffee hang out, with outdoor sidewalk seating in front and some bench seating at the separate entrance along the side of the building. The front windows are large and let in a lot of light — in contrast with the darker interior of darker wood tables and chairs, classic art posters of Italian villages, stained glass, and faux wood stove in the back. Despite jazz music on the radio, it’s a relatively quiet place.

They get their beans from the little-known Peter James Coffee, which offers dozens of different roasts. This can be a bit problematic for a small operation, as they must support an extensive product line with few resources. Not only does Peter James offer far too many flavored coffees, but this café offers custom blends from them as well — selling their coffee retail on site.

Using an old, three-group La San Marco, they do not grind to order — pulling shots with a swirling, relatively thin, medium brown crema. The flavor is rather flat: a plain mix of mild spices and little much else to note. This is a little surprising given that it is a modestly short shot in a classic brown ACF cup for doppio shots.

Sorry, Burlingame residents. While this location has garnered a lot of local support, sad to say, the espresso here isn’t all that much better than the Starbucks across the street. While we’re all for supporting local, independent cafés, they have to make espresso that at least looks better than that.

Read the review of Il Piccolo Caffé in Burlingame.

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In the nearly two decades that we’ve been visiting Santa Cruz, they’ve arguably lacked a vibrant café that excels at both coffee and as a student hang out. Recent café openings in town, such as Verve Coffee Roasters, have helped tremendously — but at Verve the focus is squarely on the coffee. (Not necessarily a bad thing.)

With the Abbey Coffee, Art & Music Lounge, Santa Cruz has a solid contender at both — though a bit unexpectedly in the form of a non-profit operated by the Vintage Faith Church. Open since mid-2008, their slogan is “made with love.” And given the quality that goes into the coffee and the commitment of the staff, it’s hard to argue with that.

The staff here, volunteers, are incredibly friendly and coffee enthusiasts to boot. Inside it’s a packed scene of collegiate youth, with occasional jazz performances at night. The space is vast and somewhat dark, with an odd, edgy feel of someone’s old antique store: mismatched sofas, tables, chairs, church benches, hanging window panes, pianos, candles, light fixtures, and found art.

Using a two-group Nuova Simonelli at the front bar, they serve Verve’s Sermon blend (how appropriate) with a dark brown swirl of modest crema in traditional brown ACF cups. (Date-stamped Verve coffee is also available for retail sale.)

The resulting shot is a little light on body, but it carries a lot of flavor in an appropriately sized shot: some dark caramel notes over a pungent flavor of cloves and herbs with a sharp brightness at the bottom of the cup. Sermon blend never knocks you over, but it has a nice balance of spice with just a hint of sweetness. Served with a small cookie on the side.

Their cappuccino is typically “traditional”: lighter on the milk and volume (so you can taste the espresso) with thick and creamy milk just barely frothed in as a thinner layer. Maybe not the best Verve shot you’ve ever had, but you’ll be hard-pressed to find a better place to enjoy one.

As for negatives, while our espresso drinks were solid, rumors among the locals have it that consistency can be a problem. Quality control could be an extra challenge with their volunteer staff.

And when we purchased some of the Sermon blend here for home use (from beans they packaged for us out of the supply they were using at the coffee bar), we audibly encountered the first bit of rocky debris in our Mazzer Mini in the seven years that we’ve owned it. There are few more alarming sounds than a pebble coming into contact with your burrs; small pebbles make big, bad noises. We wouldn’t think much of it, but after seven years of home roasted and retail roasted coffee in our Mazzer, it’s very unusual that a “defect” like that came through in their coffee supply.

Read the review of The Abbey Coffee, Art & Music Lounge.

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This is the kind of place that makes you proud to live in San Francisco. We knew we were in for a treat when we walked in, saw the black-and-red paint all over the space, saw the radio studio with its skull-and-crossbones banner that looks out over the café, and heard the DJ airing Motörhead and the Dead Kennedys (DKSF, as we like to call them, in contrast to DKNY). Now this is a true SF neighborhood café.

Although the associated café has only been in operation since last year, the actual Pirate Cat Radio radio station has been in operation for several years — broadcasting locally in SF at 87.9 FM, but also in L.A. and Berlin. (The FCC battles are a story in itself.)

We first stumbled across the café just a couple weeks ago — when dropping off a friend to pick up his car at one of the area’s many low-profile auto repair shops. But word can travel quickly. Last week NY-based Nicolas O’Connell of La Colombe mentioned stumbling on the place, saying how much he loved the vibe and that its coffee service was quite decent — even if it was a little in spite of itself (we concur). And rumors have it that celebrated traveling TV chef, Anthony Bourdain, stopped in last week to sample their famed bacon maple latte — likely as a segment for a planned TV episode of “No Reservations”: San Francisco?

And you can see why it warrants some of this attention. We may lament some of the tiresome hipster clichés at many SF coffee houses, but these guys seem about as genuine and authentic as they come. Operated by a station manager named Monkey (that’s now his legal name), this is a fiercely independent media novelty that runs on $30/month membership for those who want to operate their own radio shows. (Members also get a $0.50 discount on their espresso shots — and can get a beer in the back.) But it’s community-supported radio, so anybody can become a member.

In the past year, Monkey (as he told it to us) has really gotten into coffee. So much so that it inspired him to recently tour Portland and visit every Stumptown in town. Monkey has brought many of these lessons and obsessions back into Pirate Cat’s coffee operations. Their standards are a little bit all over the place (bacon maple lattes?), but yet it somehow still works for the most part. They have a modified two-group Rancilio (with two boilers and an eyebrow-raising mercury switch) and use Mission-based De La Paz Coffee.

There are a few café tables out front and several tables inside. Inside it’s black and red with artistic oddities, such as the string of gas cans along the ceiling — painted fingernail-polish red and strewn with bullet holes. At the back of the small space they even have a screen for projecting movies. One wall inside is effectively the radio booth, where café patrons can view the on-air DJ through the glass.

When we first visited, the barista on duty was brand-new and just learning the ropes with real customers. Tony, a Native American who says he represents one of the 10,000 Mayans living in the Mission, just started his own radio show playing “Red Blues” (as it’s known). He self-consciously followed all the steps — except for pouring my “for here” shot in a paper cup. Bad, bad form — but you have to give the new guy a break.

Other baristas here are obviously more experienced (we just had to revisit that same day). Even so, they tend to pull large volume shots with a medium brown, even crema. Despite its volume, it has surprisingly decent body and is quite flavorful: an interesting, mellow herbal mix of spices. (Served in red ACF cups and no saucer when they get “for here” right.)

Clearly one of SF’s most unique cafés this side of Trouble Coffee. Support your local radio … and café.

Read the review of the Pirate Cat Radio Cafe & Studio.

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