Espresso News and Reviews – TheShot.coffeeratings.com

Yes, this is the San Francisco legend — a meeting place for writers of the 1950s Beat movement; where Francis Ford Coppola wrote the script for The Godfather; where espresso was first introduced to the West Coast in 1956. This café is rather old-school Italian to the core — one of the fewer and fewer [...]

The Pearlina tea shop shut down and was replaced by this French bakery/café. At its heart is a great artisan baker who makes extraordinary pastries and breads (and is a true artisan: no cookie cutter stuff here). This is the baker’s only retail outlet, as the French team behind it have supplied some 40 local [...]

Yes, this one is one of the classics. It’s a bright North Beach café that’s been open since 1988. They have many small indoor café tables with a lot of that “Cinzano”-like print art, clean surfaces, and East-facing glass windows. They also have an adjoining room that’s available for a lot of overflow on popular [...]

This youthful North Beach hangout is often filled with patrons who speak Italian, and they often show the “calcio” (soccer) games from Italian RAI International TV. Several customers will be reading Italian newspapers at any given time, and Italian pop music often plays in the background. However, this locale strikes me as the kind of [...]

The local papers will soon be writing about some of the public places to catch World Cup 2006 in Germany, which starts this Friday and culminates in the final on July 9. The local press’ regular favorite public hangout for watching any of the 64 matches is the Steps of Rome. But if you want [...]