America's best coffee shops

Coffee culture in America, in the post-World War II era, began with the dark stuff. The "water dressed down in brown," as singer Ani DiFranco once put it — the nitty, gritty, put-the-hair-on-your-chest stuff that would hardly pass for a decent cup of coffee today. And forget the billions of combinations of milks, beans, and flavors you'll find today; back then, it was coffee, black, and no questions asked.

Coffee soon hit a decline through the '60s and '70s, thanks to the rise of America's other favorite caffeinated drink — soda. But then came the second wave of coffee, when hanging out in coffee shops and drinking espresso became cool (basically, finally following in the footsteps of our European neighbors who had it right all along). But with the boom of coffee once again came the mass-market appeal of coffee.

Starbucks opened its doors in Pike Place Market in Seattle in 1971, when the coffee industry was still in decline. By 1984, Howard Schultz had tried the café experiment in downtown Seattle, with the first ever Starbucks Caffè Latte. By 1994, Starbucks had 425 stores; by 2004, Starbucks had 8,569 stores. The total number of Starbucks as of July 1, 2012 (according to the company's timeline)? 17,651. And that doesn't even include the number of coffee chains that took off in the same period: Dunkin' Donuts, Peet's, The Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf, Peaberry, Caribou, Seattle's Best (a subsidiary of Starbucks). But no chain exemplifies the mass-market appeal of coffee more than the rise of Starbucks.

Now, we're riding out the third wave of coffee that's followed the likes of craft beer and craft cocktails, and entering into the fourth wave. And with it, we find America's best coffee shops — the places that dedicate themselves to the craft of coffee, from bean to cup. It's the farmers, the roasters, the buyers, and the baristas that have redefined coffee to be more than just a caffeine boost. For the coffee shops we've found, coffee is a way of life. Now more than ever, coffee shops are doing way more than serving better roasts or making your latte into latte art. They're building relationships with the growers, sourcing beans in ethical and sustainable means, making single-origin roasts to bring out unique flavors, and brewing with innovative techniques never seen before — so your Mr. Coffee has long been put to bed.

We scoured for the best independent coffee shops and chains that have changed the way we drink coffee. Our criteria? The best quality in coffee and food, atmosphere, customer service, and the "unique" factor. (Case in point: a DeLorean car in the back of one shop. You just can't top that.) We then asked our coffee experts — coffee bloggers, roasters, shop owners, baristas, and educators — to nominate the shops they loved. Our panel then voted on a list of nearly 150 coffee shops from coast to coast. In the end, we narrowed down our list to the most highly ranked (and most talked about) 33 shops and chains that are riding into the fourth wave of coffee and beyond.

Some of the coffee shops you may know well; Stumptown, Intelligentsia, and Blue Bottle all made the cut for an overall quality that's hard to beat. And many of the shops on our list serve roasts from Stumptown and Intelligentsia, proving that they're the roasts to beat. (Another roaster we saw over and over again on our list? Counter Culture Coffee Co., based in Durham, N.C. While Counter Culture doesn't operate any storefronts and instead focuses on supplying shops and educating the public, it too is a winner in our eyes.) Some of the shops have added on roasteries for a true "farm-to-table" approach. And some of our shops operate under a multiroaster model, serving a selection of roasts from the big guys, like Stumptown, and the local providers.

Has the coffee market become oversaturated? Some say not at all; coffee consumption actually reached its peak in 1946, when Americans consumed about 48 gallons per year. (Can you imagine how many pour-over coffees that would be today?) But with these coffee shops as a bucket list of sorts, we'll sure have fun trying to get back to that 48-gallon level.

1. Ultimo Coffee, Philadelphia

What makes Ultimo tick — and brings in Philadelphians in flocks? Simplicity, and a little bit of love. In the constant battle over which cities have the best coffee culture — East Coast versus West Coast, New York City versus Philadelphia — it frequently boils down to the people behind the counter. And many will argue that Philadelphia, often seen as the underdog to the big cities of the Northeast, is hands-down the winner for the best cup of coffee because the coffee scene there is hardly home to the snobbery that can come with "Third Wave" coffee. Sure, you'll find pour-over drip coffee and Chemex batches at Ultimo, along with niche coffee roasts (all from Counter Culture Coffee Roaster) and artisanal sandwiches (new from American Sardine Bar). But what you won't find at Ultimo is an attitude — and that's exactly what our panelists noted Ultimo so highly for in the customer service and atmosphere categories. In an interview with Counter Culture Coffee, co-owner Aaron Ultimo put it simply: it's about a good cup of coffee and a good atmosphere in which to enjoy it. "In the end, I love the people in and around the industry, and I love the coffee that I get to drink every day," he said. That, plus the shop's dedication to educating the public with free cuppings and tastings, makes it worthy of a heavy title. (Bonus points for the craft beer store the Newbold location shares its space with — caffeine to start the day, beer to end it.)

2. Gimme! Coffee, New York

The upstate New York coffee roaster turned New York-centric chain of independent shops was making "Third Wave" coffee before it was even a thing. Consider what Ben Phelan wrote in GQ back in 2007, when Gimme was just seven years old, had opened its Williamsburg location four years earlier (you know, before Williamsburg was a hot spot for coffee), and was currently shopping for its Manhattan location: "… A new wave of coffee shops — like Brooklyn's Gimme [and peers around the country] — have a radical idea about coffee: that it can be elevated above mere drinkability and can be a culinary product equal to single-malt Scotch." Since then, Gimme has transformed into the godfather of craft coffee, paving the way for today's flashier coffee chains like Blue Bottle. Thanks to carefully sourced, "farm to cup" beans, artisanal roasting (they were recently named Roaster of the Year by Roast magazine), and its homegrown roots, Gimme is quite often the standard that coffee shops and up-and-coming chains hope to achieve. Not to mention a crop of baristas that are hard to find in today's day and age. Wrote one barista on the company blog as a sort of "in defense" of the profession, "As a Barista, I have a lot of priorities that I'm juggling at any given time — coffee information, flavor notes, side work, how many trips downstairs I have to make with crates of milk — but if I'm doing my job right, the top of that list should be the person standing across the counter from me. Even if he or she chooses to ignore me. Even if he's on his phone or she's wearing sunglasses. Even if he orders a caramel macchiato or a dry cappuccino or an espresso to go. I don't care. I still love them. And I'll still make them the best coffee I can because there are no rules for me when it comes to customers."

3. Barista, Portland, Ore.

After seeing Portlandia's "barista manifesto" sketch, it's easy to assume that coffee shops in Portland, Ore., are well, out there. But a look just one of the coffee shops in Portland shows that there's substance behind the title of America's coffee capital. What Barista does particularly well is showcase the best roasters of the Northwest in a "multi-roaster" model with a rotating list of roasts that range from hyper-local roasters (like Seattle's Kuma) to Stumptown. It's just part of Billy Wilson's, barista champion and owner of Barista's three locations, perspective on coffee culture as a whole. It's much bigger than just one shop or one roaster — "I see this new coffee movement as something that goes straight back to farms and villages in the Third World," he said to the Willamette Week. "It can literally change the lives of whole families. So I want to do it well."

4. Courier Coffee Roasters, Portland, Ore.

Courier Coffee Roasters may have paved the way for Barista, Stumptown, and other Portland-area coffee shops as one of the most independent, "low-fi" coffee shops around. Known for its hand-roasted, small-batch coffees, Courier Coffee originally started as a bike-delivery roasting company. You can still get your coffee delivered by bike, but the brick-and-mortar shop is at heart a local coffee shop — with a vinyl collection, hip-hop turntable, freshly baked muesli and baked goods, pour-over coffee dripped into Mason jars, and not much else. The shop takes into consideration the bean from start to finish, only roasting, grinding, and brewing the amount the baristas think they'll serve per day — quite literally the freshest cup of coffee you'll get in PDX. The shop even uses KF-4 23K Swissgold paper filters for a taste that's as clean as a French press. It's the kind of coffee shop that revels in its simplicity — and keeps customers coming back for more.

5. Café Grumpy, New York City

Café Grumpy may be now best known as Ray and Hannah's coffee shop on Girls to those outside of New York City, but New Yorkers know it as the coffee shop to go to. What sets Café Grumpy apart in a sea of coffee shops in the Big Apple is its own roasted coffee. Co-founder Caroline Bell told Food GPS in an interview that they started roasting their beans in 2009 in order to take coffee into their own hands and now, the Greenpoint, Brooklyn, company produces seven different roasts from Brazil, Nicaragua, Colombia, and others. It's what turns a long list of coffee drinks into something beyond an ordinary cup of joe. But Café Grumpy is most loved by coffee lovers for its dedication to maintaining a true coffeehouse vibe at its four New York City locations. Gone are the laptop drones hooked up to an endless stream of Wi-Fi — it's one of the few shops without Internet. Instead, what you get is a relaxed atmosphere with real conversations hanging in the air. Said Bell to The New York Times back in 2010, "I appreciate the idea of when you go someplace and it feels like a home away from home, but I don't think it should be a home office away from home." (Now, if only coffee shops could ban smartphones.)

6. Lamill Coffee Boutique, Los Angeles

Compared to the other coffee shops on the list, Lamill isn't going to have the comfy, cozy vibe you'd expect to find in a coffee shop. But there's a reason why it's called a "boutique" and not house or shop — Lamill translates the coffeehouse cup of joe into a chic, modern take. Consider Lamill the white-tablecloth restaurant of coffee shops, says owner Craig Min: "Most beverage places today have instant, industrial ways of making their drinks and use mass-produced syrups and powders," he says. "… We're sourcing the highest-quality, fresh ingredients to make the syrups, extracts, and consommés that go into our beverages." How is Lamill changing the game? Allowing customers to pick their "extraction" (Clover, Chemex, Eva Solo, French press, hand-drip iced coffee, Japanese hand-drip, or siphon brew) and their coffee bean, or from a long list of espresso drinks. Lamill brings a new level of sophistication and polish to your cup of coffee (and tea, too).

7. Stumptown, Various Locations

Throw Stumptown into the great coffee debate, and you'll get a variety of opinions. Some love it, some hate it. Some say it doesn't deserve to be called a great coffee shop, that it's gone corporate. Yet our panelists ranked Stumptown higher than the majority of coffee shops and above the six nominated coffee chains for its quality of coffee, atmosphere, and customer service. No doubt that Stumptown was the game-changer in the field of coffee; what Starbucks is to Seattle, Stumptown is to Portland. Portland Food and Drink put it best: "Love 'em or loathe them, Stumptown has given Portland a reputation as a serious coffee city, and has turned the industry upside down by cultivating consumers to demand higher quality, and to push cafés into being willing to provide it. Stumptown realized early on that great beans were nothing if the beverages made from them were poorly executed. They have insisted on intense — some might say rigid — training, equipment programs and wholesale buying requirements." Slowly but surely, Stumptown is bringing its quality roasts from coast to coast; after a successful opening of a roaster in Red Hook, N.Y., and two Manhattan locations (one of which soon to open in Chelsea), the summer of 2012 brought new reports of a Los Angeles Stumptown.

8. Ritual Coffee Roasters, San Francisco

There is no shortage of good coffee in San Francisco — but based on our panelists' votes, Ritual Coffee Roasters blew the competition out of the water. What did it? The nearly perfect scores for its coffee and single-origin espresso, sourced from Central America, South America, and Africa and brewed in Japanese V60 cone brewers. At the shop on Valencia Street in San Francisco, and its accompanying locations (a coffee bar in the Bayview neighborhood, a shipping container at Proxy in Hayes Valley, and in the Oxbow Market in Napa), it's just coffee, pure and simple. It's no wonder the Valencia flagship attracts a wide range of residents, from yuppies to coffee geeks, which may explain the high score for atmosphere. In a city that's buzzing with caffeine, Ritual will continue to hold its spot as the best.

9. Joe the Art of Coffee, New York and Philadelphia

Everyone knows Joe for their exceptional lattes, cappuccinos, and espresso — they serve undoubtedly some of the best you'll find in New York City. Our panelists raved about Joe's quality coffee, atmosphere, and unparalleled customer service. Now that the company is about to turn 10, the owners have reflected on what's made them a success. "When we opened, we didn't know anything. My guess is that if I went back and tasted coffee from back then, I'd probably be pretty horrified," said co-owner Jonathan Rubinstein to the New York Daily News. Now, Joe is constantly recognized for its roasts (having just won a 2013 Good Food Award for its Ethiopian Camp brew) and Intelligentsia offerings, as well as its accessibility for the average Joe (get it?) consumer. "If you're a fan of Dunkin' Donuts coffee and don't think you fit in with the high-end consumer, we're going to do everything we can to bridge that gap and make you realize that coffee fanatics are coffee fanatics no matter what you drink or how you drink," Rubinstein recently said to Eater. Now that the Rubinsteins are taking Joe across state lines to Philly, the Joe empire is getting just a bit bigger each year.

10. Intelligentsia, Various Locations

Intelligentsia may be one of the fastest growing coffee chains in the nation; the chain is now expanding into San Francisco and New York City, on top of its locations in Los Angeles and Chicago, its home base. And we can see why: Intelligentsia ranked consistently high among our panelists for the quality of coffee, atmosphere, and customer service. Plus, Intelligentsia is dedicated to teaching the public exactly how they roast their direct-trade beans and serve their espresso drinks. (Word has it that the Intelligentsia barista training program is one of the hardest to graduate from.)

11. Commonplace Coffee Co. House and Roasters, Pittsburgh

Commonplace Coffee Roasters is about as homegrown as you can get — the couple behind Pittsburgh's burgeoning coffee scene, Julie and TJ Fairchild, began with the original coffeehouse and roastery in 2003 in Indiana, Penn. Since then, the coffee company has grown to include four shops and two roasteries in Indiana, Penn., and Pittsburgh. With such rapid growth, you'd think it'd be easy to let the success (and maybe caffeine) get to their heads. Not so: "At every step of growth for The Commonplace it has always centered around people," wrote TJ Fairchild in a blog post. "The growth has always been organic and natural; never premeditated and forced." The Fairchilds and Commonplace are actively trying to change Pittsburgh's perception of coffee from, well, something commonplace to something extraordinary.

12. Milstead & Co., Seattle

Owner Andrew Milstead has been praised for taking the most difficult approach to the coffee shop model — the multiroaster model — and excelling at it. That means Milstead balances a slew of different roasters, from roasters as big as Stumptown to as small as Heart Roasters in Portland, Ore., to put forth the best coffee possible — and that's not always as easy as it looks. Writes Jordan Michelman in Seattle Met, "Coffee professionals regard the multiroaster model as the most difficult to pull off. It's akin to a chef who works with different purveyors from week to week, a bartender who never sticks to the same base bourbon, or a band that plays a different set every night. The target is always moving, the parameters steadily shifting." But it's Milstead's dedication to the coffees he serves that makes it rank so highly on our list for its quality. With more than 30 different coffees on the menu to sample at a time, you'll never get a better education about coffee than at Milstead & Co. Stop by for a single-origin espresso or an Aeropress or Clever drip coffee, and consider yourself schooled in the art of coffee. Said Milstead in an interview with Seattle Coffee Gear, when explaining why they don't serve Venti-sized coffees or decaf coffee, "We're doing things a little differently… we're totally quality coffee-focused. The coffees that we have are of the utmost quality and intended to be enjoyed on their own… and we seem to have a basic clientele that seems to enjoy coffee on its own."

13. Everyman Espresso, New York City

"If you're tired of nerdy coffee shops that deliver great drinks but make you feel like a moron, then get yourself to the super-friendly Everyman Espresso," wrote the Village Voice in its review -- and we couldn't have said it better. We can appreciate a coffee shop that doesn't just cater to the new wave of coffee nerds, but hopes to share its love of coffee for, well, the everyman. Sam Lewontin, the lead barista trainer for Everyman Espresso said it succinctly in a blog post, when defending brew methods. "Customers, generally, don't come into our stores looking for a lesson [in brewing methods]… What customers want, for the most part, is to be served tasty coffee in a way that makes them feel good about themselves." That could be why there's no real menu in the shops, just a printed blurb about the coffee and locally sourced milk. Now with a new location in Soho, the East Village coffee connoisseur serves its Counter Culture coffee with a little bit of heart on the side.

14. Peregrine Espresso, Washington, D.C.

How could we not include the holder of the title of best coffeehouse in the Eastern U.S. on our list? Peregrine beat out coffee shops from the East (and Canada) in a recent competition, where a team of three baristas had to take over a coffee shop for 30 minutes during a trade show while judges lurked behind the counter. The reason the Peregrine team believed they won the competition was the same reason our panelists ranked Peregrine so highly: its atmosphere and customer service. Said Dawn Shank, one of the winning baristas, to WTOP, "What makes Peregrine special? I would definitely say it's the energy between baristas and customers. I know that for a lot of baristas talking about specialty coffee to customers is something that we really want to focus on, and share without overly geeking out on customers and make it a welcoming environment where customers want to learn more about coffee and they don't feel intimidated or just turned off by something new or different." We couldn't agree more. Stop by for a Counter Coffee Culture at one of Peregrine's three D.C. locations, and relax — they've got you covered.

15. Artifact Coffee, Baltimore

Artifact is a relative baby compared to some of the shops on the list, as it officially opened in July 2012. Yet the coffee shop with delicious food offerings (from the owners of Baltimore favorite Woodbury Kitchen) has taken the city by storm. Our panelists raved about the breakfast and "Day Kitchen" menus (and look forward to trying the brand-new BYOB dinner service) at Artifact, but it's the "barn-chic," farm-to-table vibe that helped Artifact claim its spot on our list. And, of course, its dedication to coffee — with roasts from the coffee roaster for whom coffee geeks everywhere shout their love, Counter Culture Coffee, it's hard to find a better cup of coffee in Baltimore. That includes the espresso bar with some surprising additions to the list — a honey macchiato and a goat's milk caramel latte, for instance —, pour-over coffee, and Japanese cold brew iced coffee (where the coffee is brewed directly over ice). All that, plus they offer complimentary coffee cuppings on Fridays with Counter Culture brews.