Espresso News and Reviews – TheShot.coffeeratings.com

Here in SF, we’re sometimes way too busy holding our noses because a coffee shop doesn’t use Blue Bottle or Fair Trade certified coffee. (In our personal case, sometimes it’s just too few places that use Barefoot.) To put things a little in perspective, here’s a story today from the Australian Broadcasting Corporation: Police bust [...]

Call it coffee’s version of Hubble’s Law: the rate at which a local coffee scene evolves is inversely proportional to its maturity. What?!? Let us explain. Seattle and San Francisco are examples of well-established coffee cultures, and the rate of evolution and improvement we see in the coffee there tends to nudge along at a [...]

The name is “Ma’velous”. We’re not sure if this is a New Yorker thing — like when Monday Night Football legend, Al Michaels, tries to pronounce the ‘h’ in the word “huge.” But the owner, Phillip Ma, is a self-fashioned coffee geek with apparently enough money for high-end coffeemaking toys but no real prior training [...]

Four years ago we posted about our disappointment over high-end restaurants that offered plenty of options for tea but only one for coffee. It’s as if these celebrated houses of distinguished taste decided that coffee had all the nuance and variety of unleaded gasoline — and it showed in the product they served. And when [...]

Foodie rag gone online, Saveur.com, recently published a series of coffee-themed articles in conjunction with the SCAA. One of the articles lamented American restaurants’ continued one-dimensional treatment of coffee: Nothing ‘Regular’ About It – Saveur.com. “‘Regular’ coffee?! The appetizer alone rated five adjectives,” writes reporter Jim Munson. We’ve expressed this very same lament here a [...]

This café isn’t easy to stumble upon, even if its signature is a rather large Art Nouveau café sign in lights. You have to enter the One Jackson Place center to reach this café, adorned with a miniature zinc bar and zinc-plating decorating its small kiosk. Located in a quiet courtyard surrounded by multiple stories [...]

Right off BART’s Plasticuffs Station (Mission & 16th Sts.), across of Cafe Los Olvidados, this has never been an attractive part of the city — though mostly because of who might accost you on the sidewalk. (I’ve long called it Plasticuffs Station because of the frequency of finding perps face down on the plaza in [...]

Last year I asked the question, “Where are all my coffee varieties?”. Today a press release from a Florida roaster picked up where I left off: Espresso like no Other and perhaps a little like Wine. The broken English is pretty amusing for a press release — even if they make an obligatory wine comparison [...]

This newer café/pizza place lies in the little-known neighborhood of Dogpatch, just off the new SF Muni T line. It’s a small space with a couple of indoor tables and a few out front on the corner sidewalk. Just inside the door on the left is a small espresso bar: home to a two-group La [...]

The Staten Island Advance (Staten Island has news?!) published an article today that heralds the arrival of tea as America’s new hot beverage of choice over coffee: Tea time. For all the Oolong Frappucino and Chai Latte lovers out there, hey — more power to you. These are good times with more options. But before [...]