Espresso News and Reviews – TheShot.coffeeratings.com

Please repeat after me: “Food and drink is entertainment.” What do I mean by that? Public tastes in entertainment change. We no longer attend social dances or go to the circus. In fact, if someone probably heard their neighbors were doing that, they would hide any of their small children. And instead of seeing the [...]

This is the flagship kiosk of a series of hole-in-the-wall cafés named after Lambretta scooter models (the others being Cento and Special Xtra). There’s even a yellow Lambretta in back with the Cafe Lambretta logo written across its windscreen — a remnant from the owners’ first, and now defunct, café foray. There’s even a Cento [...]

This is one of the latest in a chain of hole-in-the-wall coffee kiosks from locals Kirk Harper and John Quintos. After Kirk and John got out of operating the defunct 330 Ritch Street nightclub after many years, they took their obsession with Lambretta motor scooters and opened Cafe Lambretta in Nob Hill a few years [...]

This dive with barely a service opening sits at the end of an old brick building — still labelled as “Uncle Vito’s Pizzeria” in signage and its black awning. Opening just last month, “Cento” stands for “100″ in Italian — which looks like about the monthly rent that owner John Quintos must be paying for [...]

Jeremy Tooker, co-founder of Ritual Roasters, had a bit of a falling out with Ritual’s co-owner, Eileen, and he’s pursued his own vision of a quality coffee business in Four Barrel Coffee: no Wi-Fi, no squatting start-ups that can’t pony up rent, just no-frills retail coffee plus a roasting and distribution operation. We admire the [...]

This espresso bar is a landmark DIY (i.e., Do It Yourself) oddity of San Francisco, making it something of a cultural institution in the short time it’s been in business (since Summer 2007). The closest (inadequate) comparison we can think of is Portland’s surreal Rimsky-Korsakoffee House — a fun house of a coffee place complete [...]

Today Blue Bottle Coffee Co. opened up their long-anticipated Mint Plaza café — their first true space (besides kiosks and outdoor carts at the Ferry Building and in the East Bay) to showcase James Freeman’s commitment to freshness. The café is located at a bend in Jesse St. in the Mint Plaza alleyway — in [...]