Sacramento tops list of world's best cities for coffee (San Francisco: appointed, home)

[sacite]

Originally Posted by Chimérique

I like all of the coffee places in Sacramento. All great to walk or bike to: All have outdoor seating. Food served at most locations

Tupelos-College crowd and a local neighborhood crowd-East Sac/River Park neighborhood, in a very nice neighborhood; 3mins from Sac State by car. Outdoor seating

Naked Lounge- Midtown - Restored historic building/residence, eccentric crowd, all ages, steps from light rail. Outdoor seating. Downtown - In a restored 1950/60's retro motel, local younger crowd, live musical performances.

Temple Coffee, block(s) from light rail, downtown(classy) and midtown locations(the new relocated Sacramento Co-op will be next door, very nice settings, midtown location sits next to a Sacramento Winery.

Old Soul - back alley location in midtown, comfortable, diverse crowd; Oak Park location, larger, comfortable, very nice, local Oak Park crowd-Great Food, breakfast, lunch, dinner.

Chocolate Fish - East SacLocation, very very customer friendly, local East Sac/Tahoe-Elmhurt crowd, great to walk to from those tree-lined leafy streets. Sits next to a sports bar. Outdoor seating. Classy. Downtown location is nice too, mostly a worker's crowd.

Insight - first location downtown, mixed residential and business neighborhood downtown very close to south side park, comfortable.

Weatherstone/Old Soul - Midtown I/J Street locations, outdoor brick courtyard.

A+ list! I also liked the Chocolate Fish on 5th and Q ST, but I think it closed down. It was a great little spot hidden amidst trees. Close enough to see downtown but away from the noise. Also, I found a bakery on my morning jog yesterday around I wanna say 18th and F? Had never seen it before, but I saw they were serving coffee and espresso. I might try that one next time.

[wburg]

Originally Posted by Chimérique

I'll be for surely dating myself when I say I remember in all of California, the only real cafe/coffee-expresso type places could be found only in San Francisco, Berkeley and La Jolla(San Diego) I don't even think LA had such a place. And there were just a handful of places in SF.

They were so rare and unique; it was one of the reasons I would go to SF before living there. I'm talking years before the first Starbucks opened up outside of Seattle.

Europe was 100 years ahead of America in having cafes devoted to coffee/tea/expresso, where you sat and lingered, read books, studied and nursed a coffee drink for hours. This was one of the reasons why you went to Europe, especially France and Italy...was to experience the cafe culture.

Now they are everywhere and dumbed down, corporate, and mass produced like Starbucks.

There was also that 5-10 year period when the cafes started spreading beyond SF and Seattle and places like Sacramento got their first cafe place - New Helvetia - a converted firehouse, now a fancy high-priced restaurant. New Helvetia was big gay hangout. This was a cool period because cities now had "cafe culture" but pre Starbucks.

Even if you took Starbucks out of the equation, America has a ton of cool coffee cafes that simply did not exist just 25 years ago. A European culture-tradition that American whole-heartedly adopted.

I was going to say that you must be a lot older than me if you can remember back before Sacramento had coffeehouses that served espresso until you got to the bit about New Helvetia. I figure we must be about the same age.

Sacramento had that kind of coffeehouse by the early 1970s (I'm not 100% positive that our 1960s beatnik cafes like Belmonte had espresso--accounts vary.) Weatherstone is the oldest one still operating, but it was preceded by Giovanni's, around the corner at 20th and H. New Helvetia opened in 1989, but Java City opened at 18th & Capitol in 1985--but by then there were already a lot of coffee shops in and around Midtown, like Coffeeworks in East Sacramento, which started roasting in 1982, the aforementioned Weatherstone, Eye Dream, Grinding Stone/Luna's, the original La Bou, and places like hybrid wine bar/espresso cafe Fiasco! (founded in 1982), located at 18th and L Street (there's a tapas place there now, it was an organic restaurant in the early 1970s!)

Here's an ad for a citywide coffee shop throwdown from 1983, six years before New Helvetia opened.


Of course, this was before my time, didn't start going to places like Java City and Terra Roxa until maybe 1985-86 and wasn't a regular until I moved here in the early 90s.

[Rob98LS1]

coffee republic in folsom has a nice ambiance paired with good food selection and decent coffee. You ever go there Caligirlz?

[Chimérique]

⌃⌃ Bars, restaurants, clubs.......this is the kind of history I love hearing about. I remember all of those places although I didn't live in Sacramento I always was visiting family in Sac at the time.

New Helvetia was special because it was a restored 1890's firehouse. It had rocking chairs and it was steps from the Gay bars. Pre-internet, it was a great dating and "hook-up" place, And the name so historic, "New Helvetia" the original name for Sacramento, showing our limited Swiss roots. Like New York and New Orleans, Sacramento was a "New....Helvetia"

[FanofBlue]

Do we now? Starbucks tastes like watery sugary warm milk. I can't stand the stuff.

[FanofBlue]

Originally Posted by caligirlz

Yep, I've been to all of them except for the actual Temple Coffee, Chocolate Fish & Insight.

I bet y'all didn't know that there are actually coffee houses outside of midtown (in the, yes, suburbs). And I don't mean Starbucks.

This list, I am going to check them all out this year. ^^^^^^

[Malloric]

Temple is too snobby though, it's literally everything bad about craft coffee. Good coffee but pretentious as hell. I've been back a couple times since, but a few years ago I watched one of their holier-than-thou barristas launch into a tirade against someone putting sugar in his coffee. The roast is good, last time I had pour over though the water was way too cold and under extracted. Seems like everyone does pour over these days and a lot of it is hit or miss. Makes you appreciate how Philz which operates at this point over a dozen locations gets it right every time.

Nobody has mentioned Pachamama yet. It tends to fly under the radar a bit, I suppose, but they've opened up a retail store in Sacramento plus have had the cafe in Davis for years inside the co-op.

[muffincake]

That is absurd. Temple, Old Soul and Insight are really the only good coffee places and they are not everywhere. If you made a coffee coverage map, Sac would mostly be uncovered. Chains like Starbucks and Peets don't count. Want a great coffee city? Visit Portland. You'll think you died and went to heaven.

[sacite]

No there's a ton of them. There's the old (name escapes me, it use to host open mics) at 18th and I that's under new management now and has changed names. You have N ST coffee on 19th and N. Another great coffee/Tea shop at 29th and S. Coffee Garden at 12th and Franklin. A coffee bar/espresso at 12th and J. Another at 5th and Capitol in the Capitol Tower space. Tupelo at 57th and H. Shine Coffee at 14th and E. On and on.

There. I just named 8 in randomly chosen areas, and there are plenty more. That's kinda beside the point though. These places host art and music events and they are woven into the local community. It's moreso that than the volume which probably influenced Sac's rating. Keep in mind the list is most "underrated" cities for coffee, not the best period.

[sacite]

Originally Posted by Malloric

Temple is too snobby though, it's literally everything bad about craft coffee. Good coffee but pretentious as hell. I've been back a couple times since, but a few years ago I watched one of their holier-than-thou barristas launch into a tirade against someone putting sugar in his coffee. The roast is good, last time I had pour over though the water was way too cold and under extracted. Seems like everyone does pour over these days and a lot of it is hit or miss. Makes you appreciate how Philz which operates at this point over a dozen locations gets it right every time.

Nobody has mentioned Pachamama yet. It tends to fly under the radar a bit, I suppose, but they've opened up a retail store in Sacramento plus have had the cafe in Davis for years inside the co-op.

Pachamama is at 20th and K in an alley, right? I got horrible customer service both times I went there.