Serving People Serving Coffee Since 2005
Issue link: http://baristamagazine.epubxp.com/i/931664
stone's throw away from All Day is Vice City, a small independent café serving coffees from roasters coast to coast. If you're looking for great pastries, take a walk down the graffi ti-art-lined streets and head to Zak the Baker, a bakery specializing in kosher breads and treats. And if you're looking for locally roasted coffee, Eternity Coffee Roasters is pulling shots of directly sourced coffees that come from the owner's farm in Colombia. Which brings me to another point: Miami is notable for the number of roasters that call the city home. Some folks even chose to cross the country to open second locations, like Alaska Coffee Roasting, which has a shop just steps away from the water in North Miami. Having enjoyed success since opening in Fairbanks, Alaska, in 1993, owner Karen Tuvia was thrilled to open her second café here. Besides great coffee, Alaska Coffee is also known for the housemade pizzas they cook to order in a woodfi re oven. There's Macondo Coffee Roasters, which, like Eternity, boasts coffee directly sourced from Colombia. Paul Massard and Chris Nolte (the former of whom cut his teeth at The Roasterie in Kansas City, Mo., and Honolulu Coffee in Hawaii) helm PerLa Speciality Roasters, based in South Miami (and about a mile from where yours truly grew up and went to elementary school). With an average temperature of 76˚ Fahrenheit, Miami also has a number of specialty roasters that focus on cold brew, notably Relentless Coffee Roasters, which sells kegs of cold brew to bars around the city and sets up offi ce cold-brew taps for enthused workers. As All Day, Salty Donut, and Alaska Coffee Roasting demonstrate, borrowing from Cuban culture is common in these up-and-coming coffee spots popping up all over the city. But coffee is far from new to Miami. In this city, asking where to get coffee is almost akin to asking where to get good Cuban food—you can go anywhere to fi nd something delicious, and likely the more unassuming the place is, the better. Drive up Calle Ocho, or Eighth Street, the main drag in the Little Havana neighborhood, and you'll see plenty of folks congregat- ing around ventanitas. Just the word ventanita immediately evokes coffee for most Miamians—the Tank Brewing Company named its coffee-beer collaboration series "The Ventanita Series," and iconic Versailles Cuban Restaurant has a webpage dedicated to its legendary coffee window. Speaking of which, if you want to be seen in Miami, there's no better place to go than Versailles. Forgo South Beach and Wynwood for this The boom of specialty coff ee hasn't erased the longstanding coff ee traditions of Miami's Cuban-American population. Roll up to any Cuban restaurant in Miami (don't ask which one—there's a Cuban restaurant on every street), and you'll fi nd espressos being slung at ventanitas, or windows, where patrons can come up to a restaurant and forgo a sit-down meal in favor of a quick coff ee and pastry. PHOTO BY ASHLEY RODRIGUEZ 38 barista magazine