Thanks to a number of regular readers who pointed this café out to me. SF may not be a big city, but it is when you’re trying to cover all the coffee shops in town.

Velo Rouge Cafe is a popular corner café with six indoor tables with window counter seating and a couple outdoor tables along the McAllister sidewalk. The place carries a bicycling theme, which suits the many bicyclists who pass along Arguello on a daily basis. It’s also reflected in the bicycle-themed artwork on their red walls. In addition to serving coffee, this café also serves full-on meals.

James Freeman and crew (of Oakland-based Blue Bottle Coffee Co.) provided some of the coffee consulting here. However, the bulk of the recommendations that put this place on the coffee map last year came from Andrew Hetzel of Cafemakers — from replacing their old UNIC espresso machine and grinder to their Illy beans, etc. Using Blue Bottle‘s Bella Donovan blend and a two-group La Marzocco Linea, they pull rich doppio shots with a full layer of darker brown crema. It has the potent flavor of some smoke and herbal pungency with a strong sweetness at the bottom of the cup.

For milk-based drinks, their microfoaming techinique is good — producing decent microfoam heart latte art. The baristas here may be a touch slow at times, but they are deliberate and careful — which is good in my book.

Read the review of Velo Rouge Cafe.

Last month I scoffed at a National Restaurant Association survey showing that espresso was “hot” among restaurant trends. In order for an item to be “hot”, isn’t it a pre-requisite that restaurants should at least be half-way competent at it?

In today’s news, the “NRA” announced a presentation at the annual hotel-motel restaurant convention this May that promises to help attendees “discover how to ride the espresso lane to bigger profits”: Drinks Media Wire – Andrew Hetzel of Cafemakers Proves Coffee is Hot at the 2007 National Restaurant Show. Apparently the restaurant business model here is to first make tons of money on espresso. And then maybe try to figure out what it takes to make a decent espresso. (Cafemakers is one among hundreds of coffee consultancies out there — with no clients in the S.F. area, btw.)

Oh, I’ve ridden that espresso lane alright. You pay a Golden Gate Bridge-sized toll for the privilege of crashing and burning down a muffler-ejecting strip of potholes: stale, pre-ground beans; overextracted “Mt.-Etna-in-torrential-downpour” flavor; clueless restaurant owners who cannot be bothered with machine maintenance and employee training…

It is worth noting that the top-rated restaurant espresso on CoffeeRatings.com is from A-16 with a respectable 13th place showing. So I suppose it is possible. But only if the restaurant cares about more than just the profit margins — which will only be fleeting.