Where SF restaurant industry pros get their caffeine fix (2024)

By Paolo BicchieriPublished Jul. 23, 2024 • 10:00am

The Bear may have you thinking chefs guzzle beverages exclusively from quart-size plastic containers while yelling profanities, but this is not always the case. Sometimes, they calmly drink coffee from actual cups at quiet cafes. Occasionally, they even drink the blended stuff, not just fancy, single-origin fare.

We asked chefs— plus a winemaker, a bar director and a babka fiend — where they get their daily fix. Some opt for the city’s finest roasters (in particular, Grand Coffee and Saint Frank), while others go for convenience, heading around the corner from their respective kitchens. Here, 11 local talents on their favorite cafes — and their go-to orders.

Christopher Renfro, owner and winemaker,Two Eighty Project and Friend of a Friend

Favorite cafe: Excelsior Coffee, 4495 Mission St., Excelsior
One of the few vintners growing grapes in San Francisco proper, Renfro, no surprise, supports his hometown heroes. He hits Excelsior Coffee since it’s near his house, Grand Coffee for the community and Beacon since it’s next to his bottle shop. His order is unfussy: “I love something simple like an espresso.”

Franky Ho and Michael Long, co-chefs, Four Kings

Favorite cafe: Latte Express, 646 Kearny St., Financial District
Perhaps the hottest restaurant opening of 2024 — think Cantonese-inspired fried squab and XO snails — Four Kings is run by two chefs who make Latte Express, a neighborhood banh mi and coffee shop on the cusp of Chinatown, their fueling station. Ho and Long’s orders are inevitably black coffee or sweet Vietnamese coffee, thick with condensed milk. It just depends on the mood of the day.

Favorite coffee shop: The Mill, 736 Divisadero St., NoPa
Lahlo may own Michelin-starred restaurant Mourad, but his favorite cafe, which serves Four Barrel coffee, is driven by comfort and a love of good bread. In the morning, Lahlo orders a Gibraltar, a short, espresso-based drink with steamed milk. Later in the day, he goes for filter coffee. “Josey [Baker]’s bread is literally my favorite thing to eat,” Lahlo says. “I just get a loaf, tear a piece and eat it along with my coffee.”

Favorite cafe: Four Barrel Coffee, 375 Valencia St., Mission
Delfina, one of the Mission’s first upscale Italian restaurants, serves up coffee from one of the East Bay’s oldest and most cherished roasteries: Mr. Espresso. But for his personal daily cup, Stoll opts for Big City blend by De La Paz, a Mission district roaster now owned by Four Barrel. “Big City is a rich coffee, like I grew up drinking,” Stoll says. “We make a huge pot in the morning and finish it by the evening.”

Ryan Pollnow, chef, Flour + Water

Favorite cafes: Andytown Coffee Roasters, 3629 Taraval St., Outer Sunset; CoffeeShop, 3139 Mission St., Bernal Heights
Pollnow is as particular about coffee as he is about his exquisite handmade pastas at Flour + Water. He couldn’t pick just one cafe, so he named two: At Andytown, he gets the Snowy Plover, the shop’s signature drink that combines espresso and sparkling water, and a breakfast sandwich. At CoffeeShop, he gets the Thai Breakfast, a combo of cold brew and banana — “a genius combination and one of the most balanced coffee drinks ever.”

Favorite cafe: Saint Frank Coffee, 2340 Polk St., Russian Hill
The mind behind the Russian Hill Japanese-American fine-dining restaurant Nisei is a macchiato kind of guy. “It’s fast,” Yoshimura says. “And it also requires a little skill, so it speaks volumes about the barista.” He gets his fix next door to Nisei, at the smartly designed Saint Frank Coffee.

Favorite cafe: York Street Cafe pop-up
A Gujarati chef, Patel always likes a chai, but if she’s doing coffee, she hunts down former Besharam team member Anand Upender’s pop-up York Street Cafe. “Anand started York Street in his garage during the pandemic, serving amazing coffee beverages featuring bold South Asian flavors that feel like home to me,” Patel says. She especially loves That Black Sesame Thing, a blend of black sesame and vanilla.

Favorite cafes: Four Barrel Coffee, 375 Valencia St., Mission; Better Half Coffee, 1954 Hyde St., Russian Hill
Horovitz — chef and owner of Hadeem, one of the city’s top pop-ups, serving a modern take on diasporic Jewish cuisine — can often be found at Four Barrel drinking a cortado. He loves the cafe for its proximity to his “goblin cave” (aka his house), its co-op model and the babka it serves from Loquat bakery. If he’s venturing further, he goes to Better Half Coffee, a weekends-only pop-up that makes exquisite espresso-based drinks, run by Saint Frank alum Josh Kapowitz.

Favorite cafe: Juniper, 1401 Polk St., Polk Gulch
Hutchins may have helped Aphotic earn a Michelin star, but for something simple — coffee and a snack — he heads to Juniper, Saint Frank’s bakery, which opened last year. His coffee order? “Mine is the industry standard,” Hutchins says: “a black cold brew.” He’s also a fan of the bakery’s signature Cubano croissant.

Favorite cafe: The Fillmore Street Cafe, 1301 Fillmore St., Western Addition
A born-and-raised San Franciscan, McPherson doesn’t need anything fancy. Her favorite coffee shop is on Fillmore Street, just like her popular fried chicken spot (recently included in The New York Times’ “The 25 Best San Francisco Restaurants Right Now”). Her order at the very basic cafe is either a black coffee or a double shot of espresso. “If my day is crazy, though,” she concedes, “it could be a triple.”