Espresso News and Reviews – TheShot.coffeeratings.com

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 [...]

Some five years ago we wrote about the problem of espresso sameness in the SF Bay Area. At issue is the challenge for local communities to preserve a diversity of quality coffee purveyors. On that subject, today’s Washington D.C. City Paper posted an article on their city’s growing quality coffee monoculture: How Did Counter Culture [...]

Opening in July 2011, this new coffeehouse expands Glen Park‘s neighborhood coffee offerings. It’s located a little off the beaten path, nearest a freeway exit from the Glen Park BART station. Outside they have a couple of sidewalk tables. Inside is a modern, semi-sterile interior of orange and gray walls and exposed chrome and stainless [...]

икониSince we’ve long tired of reading about Stumpgate, it’s time to change the coffee conversation. So instead of the global growth and ubiquity of Stumptown Coffee Roasters, we turn our attention to something closer to home: the growth and ubiquity of Blue Bottle coffee. This relatively new neighborhood café caters to local UCSF medical students [...]

The Mission is one of SF’s best neighborhoods. We don’t necessarily mean Mission Street, however: home to BART’s Plasticuffs Station and a decent assortment of angry heroin addicts. We’re talking about 24th Street — a working class neighborhood with a strong immigrant community, but without many of Mission Street’s rougher edges. Decent coffee is now [...]

With local newspapers in deep decline everywhere, the New York Times has been doing its part to capitalize on these dying markets. The Bay Area is no exception, as evidenced by today’s story on local teahouses: Bay Area Teahouses Offer an Exotic Break from Coffee – NYTimes.com. So why quote a tea article, you ask? [...]

Now that Blue Bottle Coffee Co. has expanded their roasting operations, we can expect to be super-saturated with its coming ubiquity. While that’s an overall good thing — such as now being able to snag some fresh Blue Bottle beans at the hyper-local Avedano’s Meats in Bernal Heights — it does contribute to that espresso [...]

For the second of our three-part installment on How future coffee “Waves” will come to disparage the so-called Third, we examine some of coffee’s biggest qualitative fads going today: Single-origin coffees Medium roasts The heavy-handed use of cuppings We’ll examine a little of why we must get past these fads for accessible quality coffee to [...]

Opening up in the latter half of 2008, this café may serve salads, soups, wine, and even light dinner plates, but don’t let that fool you: this is a serious coffee destination. Which is not surprising, given that Andy Newbom of Barefoot Coffee Roasters personally tipped us off to check this place out. Just a [...]

Jack Hanna of Canberra, Australia is the reigning world champion of latte art — at least according to the recent World Latte Art Championships held in Belgium this past May: Aussie cappuccino king says coffee art not all froth | Lifestyle | Living | Reuters. Australia has won the title two years running. (No surprise, [...]