San Francisco has many wonderful cafes: some are European style with good food and fabulous people-watching; others are great for bringing your laptop and using as an office. Some simply have excellent coffee.

Let’s start with places to get a good espresso: my top pick goes to Blue Bottle Café at the renovated Mint Plaza. In addition to coffee, Blue Bottle serves very delicious desserts and sandwiches. You can take them outside to enjoy on the steps of Mint Plaza on a warm sunny day.

Axis Café at the base of Portero Hill offers a contemporary chic interior and a secluded outdoor patio which is perfect for those few warm days in San Francisco. Axis has free Wi-Fi and good food so it’s also an excellent place for a casual lunch meeting. Windows users beware! When I had lunch there a few months ago, I counted 9 Macs and 1 PC.

In South Beach by the Embarcadero, try Crossroads Café, which has good food, coffee, magazines and books. It’s a cozy place to sit, read or work. If the nearby Townsend Café is full, drop by Crossroads, which feels more like the neighborhood hangout.

For more intense people watching, try Café Flore in the Castro, a popular gay (and straight) hangout. Located across from Gold’s Gym on Market Street, you can watch the gorgeous residents of the Castro glide by and wonder how they can stay in such perfect shape while savouring the luscious cakes and pastries on offer. The kitchen is open 7am to 10pm and the outdoor patio is a wonderful place to relax. There’s free Wi-Fi so you can also do work there.

Ritual Coffee Roasters in the Mission is the place to go with your MacBook and be part of the world of geeks at work. Just make sure to support the local establishment and buy a coffee from time to time if you intend to park yourself there for hours.

This leads me to The Grove with two locations: Fillmore Street in Pacific Heights and Chestnut Street in the Marina. Good places to meet people, have a light lunch or enjoy some draft beer. My favorite breakfast dish at the Fillmore branch is the oatmeal with strawberries.

Café De La Presse on Grant Street near the Chinatown gate offers French bistro ambiance, as well as over 200 international magazines and newspapers. It’s a good place for breakfast and lunch, but also for coffee especially if you are shopping around Union Square.

Soccer fans head to Café Roma in North Beach to sip espresso, enjoy the Wi-Fi connection and catch Champions League matches. Ambiance is Italian and there’s a good gelato place next door.

Café Du Soleil in the Duboce Park Area is a sunny French café with outdoor seating that gets a lot of sun. There’s also free Wi-Fi.

Café Gratitude is an alternative eco café that uses only organic produce. The café also sells books, clothing and more.

Finally, there’s Patisserie Philippe where they have amazing butter croissants that melt in your mouth like the ones in Paris. It’s nearly impossible to find a place in San Francisco that makes croissants like these.

Blue Bottle Cafe
66 Mint Street
San Francisco, CA 94103
www.bluebottlecoffee.net

Axis Cafe
1201 8th Street
San Francisco, CA 94107
+1 415 437 2947
www.axis-cafe.co

Crossroads Café
699 Delancey St
San Francisco, CA 94107
+1 415 836 5624

Café Flore
2298 Market Street
San Francisco, CA 94114
+1 415 621 8579
www.cafeflore.com

Ritual Coffee Roasters
1026 Valencia Street
San Francisco, CA 94110
415-641-1024
www.ritualroasters.com

The Grove Fillmore
2016 Fillmore Street
San Francisco, CA 94115

The Grove Chestnut
2250 Chestnut Street
San Francisco, CA 94123

Cafe de la Presse
352 Grant Avenue
San Francisco, CA 94108
+1 415 398 2680
www.aqua-sf.com

Cafe Roma
526 Columbus Ave
San Francisco, CA 94133
+1 415 296 7942
www.cafferoma.com

Cafe Du Soleil
200 Filmore Street
San Francisco, CA 94117
+1 415 934 8637

Café Gratitude
2400 Harrison Street (at 20th Street)
1336 9th Ave, (at Irving)
San Francisco, CA (also in Berkeley and San Rafael)
www.cafegratitude.com

Patisserie Philippe
655 Townsend Street
San Francisco, CA 94103
+1 415 558 8016
www.patisseriephilippe.com

Here’s a link to a Google map showing all of Mapplr’s cafes in San Francisco, including the favorites listed above.

View Larger Map

Most visitors to Silicon Valley are surprised to know that there are any cafés worth spending any time in, where the coffee isn’t watered down sludge. But there are several gems, if you know where to look. For those who are looking for places to meet people in the Valley, this is a very handy list.

The best cafe I’ve come across is Barefoot Coffee Roasters, a comfortable café with free Wi-Fi and outdoor seating. It is located in an uninspiring strip mall by Stevens Creek Blvd and Lawrence Expressway, not exactly where you’d think it would be. But the coffee is a real treat. For espresso lovers, this is the best place in Silicon Valley: nothing is automated. Everything is manual. Everything is done right by professionals, so while it may take a few minutes to get your perfect espresso, it’s worth it. For those who live too far, an online store is available too. On a side note, an excellent Pakistani restaurant called Shan is right next door.

Café Borrone is a more European style café, where food is good: it is a place to talk, sit outside and meet people, and not just stare at your laptop. They have a nice selection of food, beer and wine, with live music on weekend nights. Sitting outside on a warm summer night is one of the rare treats this place offers. And, of course, Keplers, the independent books store is right next door.

Below is a list of additional cafes for those of want to avoid Starbucks and Peet’s: Douce France in Palo Alto offers nice French pastries; Caffé Del Doge specializes in Italian coffee drinks; Coupa Café is Venezuelan style and is favored by the Internet crowd, and Satura cakes defines itself as “Japanese innovations on European-style cakes.”

Below are my favorite cafes on a Google map. Click on the individual markers for more information about the cafe.

View Larger Map

Barefoot Coffee Roasters
5237 Stevens Creek Blvd
Santa Clara, CA 95051
(408) 248 4500
www.barefootcoffeeroasters.com

Cafe Borrone
1010 El Camino Real
Menlo Park, CA 94025
www.cafeborrone.com

Caffe del Doge
19 University Ave
Palo Alto, CA 94301
(650) 323 3600
www.caffedeldoge.com

Douce France
855 El Camino Real
Palo Alto, CA 94301
(650) 322 3601
www.doucefrancebakery.com

Coupa Cafe
538 Ramona Street
Palo Alto, CA 94301
(650) 322 6872
www.coupacafe.com

Chez Papa, the bistro, has been around for sometime now operating out of Potrero Hill. Now, the owners have opened a restaurant in downtown San Francisco on Mint Plaza next to the old Mint, a renovated square that is also home to the first cafe of the Blue Bottle Coffee company. 

The cuisine is Provenςal but with a fresh modern twist. For example, I could have had a traditional bouillabaisse but instead, I ordered roasted monkfish with “Bouillabaisse Fumet” (an intensely flavoured rich seafood broth poured over the fish), potatoes, clams, calamari and rouille. The lamb daube was very delicious and rich, but not overpowering. And the pommes frites were excellent.

• Vibe: Modern and chic, but not pretentious. There’s enough space between the tables so you can carry on a conversation. Good service.

• Pros: if you like food from the south of France, this is one of the very few places in San Francisco that gets things right. It helps that the owner is from the south of France. 

Chez Papa
414 Jessie Street
San Francisco, CA 94103
+1 415 546-4134
www.chezpapasf.com