Food - Coffee

If you're a coffee lover, you've definitely chosen the right city to visit for your vacation! A couple of barista friends of mine from Portland came and stayed with me for a week on a sort of coffee roster tour. Apparently, Oakland is one of the main shipping ports for coffee beans being shipped to the west coast of the United States, so if you're a roster here you get fist pick when beans come in. As a result, a whole bunch of amazing rosters have located themselves in the San Francisco Bay Area and have taken us from normal coffee, to some of the best in the world. And once the beans are roasted they don't sell their beans to just any coffee shop, they make the cafes that sell for them only use organic milk, ban them from using sweet syrups, and the baristas that make the coffee have to be skilled enough to pour those cool designs with the milk when they're making you your drink. It's a whole new level of coffee that has completely spoiled me!

Blue Bottle Coffee - http://www.bluebottlecoffee.net
These guys are probably the biggest and most popular coffee roster in the Bay Area. They might be my favorite when it comes to getting an espresso drink. The shops I go to the most for their coffee is Cibo in Sausalito, Haight Street Market on Haight Street, the Blue Bottle Coffee Kiosk in Hayes Valley, and Blue Bottle Coffee in the Ferry Building.

Philz Coffee - http://www.philzcoffee.com
I think these guys were the fist ones to really do the cup-at-a-time coffee pores that everyone now does. You know, where they grind the beans and drip just a single cup of coffee when you order it. Probably because they were around before all the snoby rules about only making drip, espresso, and mochas, Philz is one of the only gourmet coffee places making making flavored coffee drinks. I love their iced mojito coffee: fresh muddled mint with brown sugar, coffee, cream, and ice. Yum! All their locations are great.

Four Barrel - http://fourbarrelcoffee.com
They do some of my favorite roasts when it comes to beans. They're also the coffee they serve at Tartine. They've got a great little shop in the Mission that I always go to. Four Barrel is definitely one of the best coffee roasters in San Francisco!

Sightglass - http://sightglasscoffee.com
Two brothers quit as roasters for Blue Bottle and went and started their own shop called Sightglass. This place is where all my barista friends like to go the most. It's got all the quality of Blue Bottle, with a little more time spent on making each cup for the customers. Their SOMA location is amazing, but it's always so far away for me. Instead I go to Matching Half in the Haight. That's just 3 blocks away from me!

Ritual - http://ritualroasters.com
Their main shop is probably the snobbiest of the fancy coffee places in San Francisco. But then again, one man's snobby is another man's quality control. The two places I go to for their coffee is their main roasting location in the Mission, or Mojo Cafe and Bicycle Shop in the Haight. Bicycles and coffee?! Yeah, it's pretty awesome!