My friend Stephanie is a software engineer who spent four years working in Tokyo before moving back to San Francisco. In Tokyo she developed a specific relationship with pour over coffee that she describes as one of the few genuinely life changing things that happened to her there. Not the career stuff, not the travel,…

My friend Carl is not a complicated coffee person. He doesn’t order macchiatos or think about extraction ratios or have opinions about single origin beans from specific Ethiopian regions. He drinks drip coffee. Has for thirty years. Two cups in the morning, sometimes a third if the day requires it, black, no sugar, no milk,…

My friend Nora spent three weeks in Italy three years ago and came back a different person in exactly one specific way. She discovered the macchiato. Not the American version, not the thing that’s basically a small latte with a different name, the actual traditional espresso macchiato which is a shot of espresso with just…

My friend Diane is a dessert person. Not in a casual way, in a serious committed way where she has opinions about chocolate that most people reserve for things that matter more in life. She grew up in Belgium, which she mentions approximately once per conversation, and she has a specific relationship with chocolate that…

My friend Gil orders Americanos everywhere he goes and he has for about twelve years. He switched from drip coffee to Americanos after a trip to Portugal where he had one that changed his understanding of what the drink could be and he’s been chasing that experience in San Francisco ever since with mixed results.…

My friend Owen is not a complicated person when it comes to most things but he has one area where he gets very specific and that area is cold brew. He’s been drinking it since before it was everywhere, back when you had to actually know where to look in San Francisco to find a…

My friend Alexis moved to San Francisco from Miami two years ago and the first summer she was here she made a mistake a lot of people make. She assumed that because San Francisco is in California it would be warm enough to justify iced coffee basically year round. She was partially right about the…

My friend Priya has a rule. She will not order a latte somewhere new without asking what coffee they use. Not because she’s being difficult, she just got burned too many times. She’d order a latte, it would come out looking beautiful, nice little leaf pattern on top, good color, and then she’d take a…

My friend Tom is the kind of person who orders a cappuccino everywhere he goes. Not because he’s trying to test the place, it just happens to be his drink. He’s been doing it for years across dozens of coffee shops in San Francisco, from little spots in Presidio Heights to bigger cafes downtown, and…