Espresso News and Reviews – TheShot.coffeeratings.com

This bakery/café first opened in 2010 as a joint venture of the Goody Goodie bakery and John Quintos, who’s behind Cento, Special Xtra, and Vega. It was originally named “StarStream,” and the coffee routinely followed the Quintos rubber-stamp formula of small La Marzocco Linea espresso machines and Blue Bottle Coffee. However, as the location developed [...]

Some Mission residents are enthralled that they finally host a decent coffee shop that doesn’t require disinfectant. Opening just this month, this corner café has bright, large windows and decorative touches: wooden counter seating in front, a converted salon room in back with a marble fireplace, a decorative sofa, and ornamental flowers. Also towards the [...]

Taking up the space that was formerly Daniel Creamery and its cheese production, the Summit has tall ceilings in a wide open space converted for café and art space use. The main seating area is littered with rectangular tables and chairs with plenty of wall outlets and laptop zombies — making you feel like you [...]

Locals rave about this coffee cubbyhole, which opened in July 2010, and you can see why. This colorful stretch of Mission St., in the heart of the Mission, has a dearth of decent coffee shops. At least ones that don’t serve ashy, overextracted dreck. This tiny shop offers four metal stools at a short counter [...]

In the transitioning Cape Town neighborhood of Woodstock, which out-Missions the Mission, this espresso bar and roaster perhaps looks like no other you’ve seen before. Located inside the newly-art-conscious Old Biscuit Mill, this small space is a pristine, stark black-&-white-themed coffee lab that exudes meticulous organization. The Old Biscuit Mill is known in town for [...]

One of the most important, and most tragic, stories of human history since the age of the Portuguese explorers is the story of Colonialism. Today the vestiges of Colonialism are apparent everywhere from globalization to the impact of slavery and race relations around the world. For example, to look at the history of Cape Town, [...]

Coffee is as universal a beverage as you can find in this country, and yet countless special interest groups seem to identify with coffee as it were their own exclusive thing. This identification may have a lot to do with a modern culture that values hype and hyperactivity — and associates that most with caffeine [...]

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 [...]

Some stories are too easy to predict. Like in our Trip Report to Pirate Cat Radio Cafe & Studio back in March. Back then we had heard the rumors that chef-turned-author-turned-TV-glutton, Anthony Bourdain, stopped in at the Pirate Cat to try their bacon maple latte. So naturally we suspected that Pirate Cat might make the [...]

This is the kind of place that makes you proud to live in San Francisco. We knew we were in for a treat when we walked in, saw the black-and-red paint all over the space, saw the radio studio with its skull-and-crossbones banner that looks out over the café, and heard the DJ airing Motörhead [...]