Espresso News and Reviews – TheShot.coffeeratings.com

Today’s New York Times reported on another chapter in this year’s ownership-change-for-funding-for-growth saga of quality independent coffee chains: Intelligentsia Coffee and Tea Asks a Friend to Help It Grow – NYTimes.com. This past May, the subject was Stumptown Coffee Roasters — generating quite a bit of angst among many loyalists who cried “sell-out!” This time [...]

Opening in early 2009, this is an unusual space in that most people cannot make it out: “Is it a café? Is it an event space? Is it a restaurant? Is it a wine bar?” Well, it’s all of the above inside an old, long, barn-like structure across from the diploma factory California Culinary Academy [...]

This small, cubic space is quite literally a large horse stable. There’s a single metal sidewalk table in front, limited bench and table seating inside on the right, and a stairway leading above the service counter to a few tables above. But it’s an open air space that’s very barn-like, with exposed studs on unfinished [...]

We don’t reserve our Trip Reports for just the finer examples of retail espresso. As our database shows, we learn from forgettable and even wretched espresso shots. Falling somewhere between the two is Whole Foods Market. Their Potrero Hill location had to be a bit of a construction project, with a parking garage underneath the [...]

Previously, we had written about Coffee Bar when it was still under construction. It has since opened on the longest night of the year, December 21 — with limited initial fanfare, as the partners first wanted to iron out some of the kinks that naturally come with opening a new space. And it is a [...]

This week the The San Francisco Chronicle published a piece on the anticipated October opening of Coffee Bar, located at at 1890 Bryant St., which is really on the NE corner of Mariposa & Florida Sts. — just west of Potrero Hill: The Inside Scoop / Restaurants retooling decor, menus, concepts. As it so happened, [...]

This “living room” environment on the north end of Potrero Hill has a large space with modern seating indoors. They also have a large, private patio in back with many tables and large sun umbrellas. The staff seem motivated to make a higher-quality espresso, and for the most part they deliver on that. Using a [...]

Next to the “Psycho Safeway” (where waiting in line at night is far more entertaining than any reality TV show could ever be), this is a busy Peet’s with often long lines of neighborhood loyals. They offer a bit of window counter seating, some minimal table seating in the back, and plenty of outdoor table [...]

Farley’s Coffeehouse benefits from coffee-obsessed local clientele and a community that’s largely closed off from the rest of the city in Portero Hill. As a result, Farley’s boasts many loyal patrons who helped vote it into third place in CitySearch.com’s 2005 Best San Francisco Coffee. Farley’s is clearly a decent place for a shot of [...]