Front and center at Sightglass: a vintage 1961 Probat roaster, lit beatifically from above by the skylights of the three-story warehouse that houses the café and roastery. Guests are drawn to the cast-iron drum as they wander from the hand-hewn bay laurel counters to watch brothers/co-owners Justin and Jerad Morrison work their magic. Read more...

The birthplace of the American espresso craze in the 1980s and ’90s and home, like it or not, to the Starbucks mother ship, Seattle has long been a caffeinated city. There’s no better place to immerse yourself in that past and present than with a visit to one of Victrola’s three outposts. Read more...

The name says it all at this sun-drenched Cali coffee shop. Instead of the drudgery of filing through a line from order to checkout to coffee pickup, you find a place anywhere along the stunning alder-wood and white steel bar and are greeted by a friendly barista who takes your order. The orders are prepared at the back of the Read more...

Too often food at coffee shops is an afterthought, an uninspired mix of pastries and sandwiches that don’t do much to highlight the drinks. Blacksmith aims to change that, pairing up Houston’s famous Greenway Coffee with a menu of inspired breakfast and lunch items (house-made yogurt with a spiced vegan granola; Vietnamese steak and eggs with pâté and French bread) Read more...

Coffee-industry veteran Andrew Barnett wanted to keep things simple when he opened this European-style café in fall 2013. Barnett’s standing-room-only coffee bar focuses on espresso-based drinks, made from Linea-brand beans roasted in the East Bay and served in cheery red cups made by Cali’s Heath Ceramics. Read more...

Open since 1988, the no-frills Espresso Vivace stand on Capitol Hill has long been in the vanguard of the quality-coffee movement. Co-owner David Schomer popularized the now famous practice of rosetta latte art and authored one of the bibles on espresso drinks, which is on its eighth printing and has been translated into Japanese, Russian, and Korean. The focus here Read more...

Sharing a space with sustainable-design company Bamboo Revolution, Coava’s handsome light-flooded shop mixes antique industrial equipment with a curvaceous bar backed by a 50-foot bamboo light box. The whole space feels a bit like a repurposed garage, which is fitting considering owner Matt Higgins started the company out of one in 2008, repairing motorcycles to save up for a coffee Read more...

A good coffee shop can feel like an extension of your living room, a caffeinated answer to Cheers. And nowhere is that more important than among the shoebox-dwelling denizens of New York. Fair Folks & A Goat takes that inviting concept a step further with their two Big Apple outposts, offering locals membership to their cafés. Read more...

You can’t get away with being just another pretty face in the coffee world these days. (But it doesn’t hurt, especially in Los Angeles.) That’s why we love Handsome Coffee Roasters. There’s no doubt this shop is a looker—all clean lines and industrial cool, poured concrete and timber, exposed beams and subway tiles. And its owners are pretty easy on Read more...

Miami was slow to catch on to the specialty-coffee trend. But Joel and Leticia Pollock, roasters from Portland big guns Stumptown and Ristretto, came to the rescue in 2010 with a hulking pre-WWII Probat Perfekt Roaster in tow. Four years later, Panther fits right into its Wynwood neighborhood, its bold geometric exterior holding its own amid the surrounding blocks of Read more...