Sidecar Doughnuts & Coffee

San Diego specialty coffee runs across a long coastline and an inland reach. Bird Rock Coffee Roasters' Little Italy waterfront cafe at 1420 Kettner anchors the contemporary register and was the first roaster in San Diego to do direct trade. The brick storefront opens through garage windows a few blocks from the airport approach and the Saturday farmers market. Revolution Roasters anchors a stretch of South Coast Highway in Oceanside, a few blocks from the pier, and started in 2011 in a garage with a Probat L12 drum roaster.

The neighborhood map covers most of the county. Little Italy holds Bird Rock and the Bastile-designed Morning Glory at 550 West Date, a 4,000-square-foot Consortium Holdings room with pink-and-green marble floors and a champagne vending machine. Point Loma runs Better Buzz at 1480 Rosecrans up from Liberty Station. City Heights carries Torque Coffee in a 1930s Art Deco building on El Cajon Boulevard, a former live music venue that sat empty for two decades before Andy and Nanelle Newbom moved in with a matte black Primo Ranger roaster. Clairemont anchors The Forum Coffee House on Genesee Avenue, roasting in-house since 2017 on a zero-emission roaster.

The inland reach extends the network. Rancho Bernardo holds COMPA Coffee Roasters, twenty miles inland from the coast, with the kitchen making syrups and chai in house. The Midway District runs Selva Coffee House inside Terra Bella Nursery on Camino del Rio West, where the bar pours its own roasts among the plants and the greenhouse light filters through the room. The result is a contemporary specialty network of around 110 active rooms with serious coastal and inland depth.