Espresso News and Reviews – TheShot.coffeeratings.com

How good quality, independent coffeeshops cope with growth and expansion takes multiple forms. Most follow the time-tested “slow crafting” method that many espouse for their coffee brewing: driving sales, opening new business loans, and expanding one location at a time. Other notables have recently thrown on the accelerant of venture capital to burn a bit [...]

This no-frills bakery is a sister to the St. Helena mothership that has been operating for over 80 years. We recently mentioned it as one of the cafés singled out in the recent-and-pathetic coffee listings from Zagat, but the espresso here is actually noteworthy. There is no indoor seating, but there are outdoor benches and [...]

Opening in 2011, Jane on Fillmore took over the former Bittersweet space and changed a few things with the design. There’s an area dedicated to baking and baked goods in the back. There’s still limited seating upstairs, now just above a mounted buffalo head with an SF Giants cap. Otherwise it has retained its sunny [...]

This downtown coffeehouse opened in 2010 right across of Boston Common and was Boston’s first to exclusively feature Stumptown Coffee beans — even identifying Stumptown with a sign out front. (They’ve since opened an additional nearby location in Boston’s North End.) This may have been a bit of Boston looking towards New York City for [...]

LaCoppa has had a strange history for such a relatively “young” espresso roaster and café chain. Owner/founder Arnold V. Spinelli is the one constant — as he developed this endeavor after selling off his 14-store Spinelli Coffee chain (founded in 1986 San Francisco) to Tully’s Coffee back in 1998. (Curiously enough, Tully’s Coffee has since [...]

Opening in October 2011, this new location of the Mission/Potrero Hill’s Coffee Bar expands their reach downtown to something you can actually walk to. The space is small and can get quite packed in a rush, but it’s clean, well-lit, and has a lab-like feel with its white countertops and lower cabinets. They offer no [...]

As we last left our story, SOMA‘s ever-morphing Sightglass Coffee was glacially executing on its grand designs to become a major SF roastery and a spacious coffee destination. It had been over a year since we last walked among the spent heroin needles of nearby 6th Street, so much of our new Sightglass experience had [...]

Ever eat a hamburger at a 1950s-themed American diner? In Hong Kong? Maybe their waffles didn’t taste like fish sauce, but it’s not uncommon to discover something lost in translation. (E.g., “Why does my hamburger bun taste like rice vinegar?”) On the spectrum of authenticity, this is the culinary equivalent to finding luxury handbags in [...]

Shockingly, it’s taken us this long to make it to Portland, Oregon — considered by many to be ground zero (no café name pun intended) of American coffee culture. And if you’re going to start sampling the offerings in Portland, it only makes sense that you start with the legendary Stumptown Coffee Roasters. This despite [...]

California’s Santa Barbara County is a lot like the rest of America when it comes to coffee: it should face a tribunal for atrocities committed against the human taste bud. What makes these many crimes particularly heinous are the various local media outlets in these communities that celebrate certain local coffeehouses as some of the [...]