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Blue Bottle Oakland (bluebottlecoffee.com)

Located in an historic 1921 former auto showroom in
Oakland, this flagship location for Blue Bottle Coffee expresses
the company’s guiding principals through its design. The focal
point is an espresso bar on a custom 30’ long stainless steel table.
Inside you’ll find seating, retail area with coffee equipment and
espresso machine sales, and the company’s tech department,
which repairs professional and residential espresso machines
behind a clear vinyl curtain. Inside, the architectural approach
was to respect and preserve the existing qualities of the former
showroom, while inserting new large scale fixture elements in
a neatly order. Their coffee? We tried the cappuccino and mac-
chiato. Both drinks were with amazing aroma, nice and heavy
body, and beautiful smooth finish. We also learned today that
all of their little desserts and sandwiches and stuff are made in-
house. The recommended menu is the famous orange-coconut
crumble, just the name makes you crave doesn’t it? Addition-
ally, they regularly hold public cuppings in their cupping room
twice a week at 2PM on Sundays and Tuesdays. Definitely a
must try if you are in SF.

Ritual (www.ritualroasters.com)

This is a newly remodeled flagship Ritual shop, which looks sleek and chic. It gives a very clean and fresh look with their LED
tube lights. Their logo kind of resembles communists with the one star. Their coffee and space is nothing short of amazing, their espresso
was probably the best ones I have had in this trip. Ritual serves up some mighty fine coffee in an ultra hip locale, without being overly
pretentious. Sourced from Bolivia, this two-farm blend is harvested at 5,000 to 5,300 feet, which is the altitude sweet-spot for coffee
production. The resulting blend of plum and red currants hits you from the inside-out. The greenery in the back is also stunning!

Samovar Tea (www.samovartea.com)

We came in to hide from the crazy wind and it
was fairly empty. They have some interesting machines
to make your tea. So many varieties of tea to choose from.
This place provides more of a bare minimalist vibe with
accents of concrete. What makes this place look interest-
ing is that, they played up with the ‘science’ of tea-making
with these fancy machines that look like chemistry lab sets.
They use the Alpha Dominche steampunk brew machines
which are as fascinating to watch as they are wonderful at
brewing an ace cup of tea. I ordered an “Green Ecstasy”
which is a Japanese Sencha and it came out excellent with
bright green color, no astringency, yet still had that grassy
flavor that I love about Sencha. Very refreshing. I believe
the Steampunks they use eliminate most human error with
its controlled app and all. Interestingly, I was impressed
with their bathroom that had a motion censored sink and
a blow dryer as well with the sink! Pretty neat!

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