Espresso News and Reviews – TheShot.coffeeratings.com

This is an unassuming deli/bakery with no seating. Outside, under a wooden construction corridor that’s been there for years, the signs and awnings say Deli & Espresso. But any reference in a phone book or directory lists it as just Deli & — and they answer the phone, “Deli And.” One of the cheapest espresso [...]

This is the sister café to the one on 15th Street in Potrero Hill by the same name. It just barely opened this week on the former site of a shut down Torrefazione Italia. It’s so new, the cash register wasn’t working when I visited, and the staff were making receipts with pencil and paper. [...]

This is a bright, Old World-styled café with modern art, tall windows, and classic background jazz music. Inside it is clean and sophisticated with an older, distinguished downtown clientele. San Francisco just doesn’t have enough cafés like this anymore. In addition to espresso, they also serve sandwiches and hot dishes at several café tables, and [...]

Far too often, I find myself reviewing espresso because it’s necessary for completeness rather than something to which I look forward. Most Starbucks Coffee retail stores (the emphasis, of course, being on “retail”) elicit the same reptilian brain response in me. Not that most Starbucks have bad espresso at all, mind you. They’re often pretty [...]

This Montgomery St. café is named for a famous Medieval bareback horse race in Italy’s Piemonte region, the parent restaurant around the corner (Palio d’Asti), and, well, Italian sandwiches. (Note: there’s a sister café on the UCSF campus.) They have many café tables in an airy space with large, high windows facing street traffic. This [...]