For the Love of Coffee
A San Francisco Bay Area Coffee Guide
to 15 of the top Coffee Spots for Lovers of that Mystical Bean
Ummah Wide Travel Series
From Santa Cruz and San Jose to Mill Valley, San Francisco, Oakland, Berkeley and all the way up to Sacramento, we don’t live confined to one part of the Bay Area. Our coffee explorations have taken us to coffee shops all over the Bay Area, this is our list of the top spots for coffee lovers with special attention to pour over coffee, high-quality espresso drinks and places with the freshest, best bags of coffee to take home. Some places that are talked about by coffee tourists and have venture capital money behind them might be making a buzz nationally as they expand but that doesn’t mean that we think their product has stayed consistent enough during their expansion to be included on this list. Some places also have lost points and been removed from the list for persistent pretentiousness across locations.
1. Boot Coffee
Mill Valley and Online
The best coffee in the Bay Area that is unfortunately very difficult to get in the Bay Area is La Mula Panama Geisha from the farm of Willem Boot in Panama, to his master roast at Boot Coffee in Mill Valley. You can only taste this coffee if you are lucky enough to end up at a coffee class at Boot Coffee or if you order it online, either way you should try to get your hands on a cup or a bag. But be warned it will make drinking other coffees difficult afterward. Check out the story behind La Mula below.
2. Verve Coffee
Santa Cruz
Just over the Santa Cruz mountains from San Jose you will find what is simply the best all around coffee shop in Northern California, Verve Coffee in downtown Santa Cruz. With a wide variety of freshly roasted coffee to take home, amazing espresso drinks and by far the best example of a nitro tap cold brew in the region, Verve Coffee is reason enough to make the trip. This beautiful shop is flagship home to one of the best up and coming coffee roasters in the United States.
3. Four Barrel
San Francisco
I love pour over coffee and for the best pour over experience in the Bay Area you have to head to Four Barrel and try the slow coffee pour over bar at their shop in San Francisco’s Mission District. Stocked with 6–8 coffees to choose from the slow bar closes at 3 M-F and at 4 on weekends. Four Barrel is a major player in the Bay Area coffee scene and this beautiful shop is also home to their roastery.
4. Equator Coffee
Mill Valley
Just down the road from Boot Coffee in Mill Valley is one of our favorite places to stop if we are headed to Muir Woods or to the beaches in the North Bay, Equator Coffee. All the coffee here is great, but you can also find some of the rarest coffee’s in the Bay to take home with you from their auction lot coffee’s, ranging from Panama Geisha’s to some of Hawaii’s finest.
5. Oudimentary
Fremont
For something totally different, but truly one of my favorite coffee shops in the Bay Area you have to check out Oudimentary. Oudimentary is an experience for the senses and as serious as many of the big coffee roasters take their sourcing of coffee, Oudimentary directly sources Oud (Aloeswood) through direct trade relationships throughout south Asia. The coffee here is of three types, pour overs with beans from Blue Bottle, a Moroccan spiced coffee mixed with frankincense and a Yemeni spiced coffee that is mixed with ginger and a number of spices. The full experience here involves trying the oud oils they sell, burning the oud wood and drinking the coffee all together in an experience that is rare in the United States. For an introduction to Oudimentary that will make you want to drive straight to Fremont, check out this globe-trotting short film below:
6. Tiny Warrior Coffee
San Francisco
Want to try some of the best cold brew coffee we’ve ever had? Head to Tiny Warrior Coffee in the Mission district and you will find cold brew made cocktail style and the largest selection of coffee’s from roasters outside the West Coast we have ever seen in the state. With coffee’s from Panther Coffee from Miami, Iconik from Santa Fe, and Crema from Denver just to name a few, it is well worth the trip to Tiny Warrior to take in all this goodness.
7. BICA
Oakland
Our other favorite multi-roaster spot in the Bay, for you home brewing coffee lovers, is BICA in the Rockridge neighborhood of Oakland. On average you can choose from at least five different coffees for a pour over and at least 5 different bags to take home with some of the West coasts finest, including Intelligentsia, Coava, Heart, Four Barrel, Ritual and Verve. If you buy a bag of coffee you get a free drink, so how could you not buy a bag? Also, check out Stanza Coffee in San Francisco for another multi-roaster gem where you can find bags of 49th Parallel from Vancouver.
8. Temple Coffee Roasters
Sacramento
If for some reason you find yourself in Sacramento, you have to go to Temple Coffee. Temple serves excellent coffee in its three absolutely gorgeous coffee shops. How good is their coffee? In 2013 their Ethiopia Yirgacheffe ECX was voted the best coffee in the United States by the CoffeeReview.com.
9. Supersonic Coffee
Berkeley
We’ve been banging down the door of this new Berkeley roastery since we first read about it early in 2014. With an all-star team assembled, we can’t wait for them to start selling coffee more consistently in the Bay Area. The only place you can find their beans featured as of now is at Babette in Berkeley. What’s especially unique about Supersonic is that they, “will be the very first coffee roasting company in North America to source and serve coffees in partnership with Nordic Approach, a leading green importing firm based in Oslo, Norway and helmed by veteran green buyer Morten Wennersgaard and 2004 World Barista Champion Tim Wendelboe.”
10. Wrecking Ball Coffee
San Francisco
We first tried Wrecking Ball Coffee in Portland, then at the Marla Bakery Kitchen Communal on our way home from SFO. Paired with their coffee cake that tastes like a cup of Arabic coffee, that cup was love at first sip. With their beautiful new shop in what was a coffee wasteland in the marina before they moved in, we highly recommend a trip.
11. Blue Bottle Coffee
Oakland, San Francisco, and Palo Alto
Blue Bottle was our first Bay Area coffee love, we would embrace early mornings at the Ferry building or at the Berkeley farmers market. Many years and tens of millions of dollars in venture capital money later it is amazing to find their New Orleans Iced coffee all over the country. If it’s your first time to the Bay Area, check out their shop in the Ferry Building or the newest shop on Broadway in Oakland. Also a great place to get your espresso machine repaired, just in case you have that type of problem.
12. Bellano Coffee/ B2
San Jose
If you ever find yourself wandering around the coffee wasteland that is the South Bay, find your way to the San Pedro Square Market in downtown San Jose where you will be filled with coffee goodness at B2. With one of the best cold brew’s in the Bay Area (on tap and on nitro tap) which pairs wonderfully with their homemade almond milk, we haven’t found anything close to B2 in the entire area and believe us we have looked. You can also get a pour over or a bag to take home from Verve or Sightglass.
13. Front Cafe
San Francisco
Front Cafe is one of our favorite new arrivals on the coffee scene in the Bay Area. A small batch roaster, their spot is not pretentious and a great place to grab a spectacular ice coffee with one of the biggest ice cubes you’ve ever seen in your life.
14. The CRO Cafe
Oakland
The CRO Cafe located in Hipster Landia, also know as the Temescal Alley in Oakland is a friendly little coffee shop with great drinks. They serve Linea and Sightglass beans.
15. Dandelion Chocolate
San Francisco
Not exactly a coffee shop, Dandelion Chocolate is a great experience for chocolate lovers, and you can find unique chocolate filled coffee drinks or regular coffee from Four Barrel also. Dandelion Chocolate sources their chocolate themselves from bean to bar with direct trade relationships like many coffee roasters in the area. Highly recommended you stop by.
Bay Area Micro Roasters
Looking for out of this world espresso drinks during a beautiful San Francisco day at Ocean Beach or in Golden Gate Park, head to Andy Town Coffee Roasters for a Snowy Plover which is a double shot of espresso, Pellegrino and whip cream made in-house. I am generally not one for weird or sweet coffee drink’s, but this is coffee experimentation done right.
There are so many small batch roasters in the Bay Area it is hard to keep count, a few we recommend include: Big House Beans in Antioch which has an awesome social mission of working with formerly incarcerated people to learn coffee roasting skills, Local 123 in Berkeley, Scarlet City and Timeless Coffee in Oakland, Red Whale Coffee in San Rafael, and Flywheel Coffee, Hollow, Sightglass Coffee and La Linea Coffee in San Francisco.
Counter Culture Coffee and Intelligentsia?
We keep hearing rumors that Counter Culture is opening their west coast roaster in Emeryville, but it isn’t happening fast enough. We have also heard for years that Intelligentsia is opening a shop in San Francisco, but that rumor seems to be dead.
For more on Coffee from Ummah Wide make sure to read this:
For more stories from Ummah Wide click our Logo below
Sign up for our Weekly Email Newsletter Here
Follow Ummah Wide: Twitter | Facebook | Instagram | Linkedin | Soundcloud
If you enjoyed reading this, please click the heart “Recommend” button below.
