Sip Something Unique at These 3 Sacramento Cafés

Craving something different? In California’s capital city, 3 cafés are reimagining what coffee can be.

BY SONORA SLATER
BARISTA MAGAZINE ONLINE

Photos by Sonora Slater unless otherwise noted

As a barista, I have full freedom to try a crazy cold foam flavor, experiment with a new kind of non-dairy milk, or add more shots of espresso than are strictly necessary when I’m making my daily shift drink. Even so, it’s often tempting to stick with the basics: An oat milk cappuccino hits the spot during an opening shift, and nothing fancy or complicated is needed to make the espresso shine.

There’s something to be said for simplicity, and all of these Sacramento cafés are great at the basics. But whether for the purpose of ensuring everyone in a friend group can find a drink on the menu that they like or exploring new facets of coffee science and technology, these three cafés have also decided to branch out into unique coffee drinks. After all, as Anchor & Tree owner Donovan Albert puts it, “Our coffee scene is just as saturated as Portland, in a smaller space—we have to set ourselves apart.”

Sacramento has a growing coffee scene of talented, diverse, creative baristas and shop owners, so whether you’re a capital city local wanting to try something new, or a visitor to the City of Trees, these spots might be worth a stop to experience coffee in a fresh way.

Camp Cove

Camp Cove opened just a year and a half ago, but they’ve already rocketed to local fame for their perfectly Instagrammable drinks (and food), their laidback, beachy café vibe inspired by Australia, where owner John Rubel originally hails from, and their out-of-the-ordinary seasonal menus.

Honeycomb cold brew, caprese matcha, and an Aussie tim-tam latte are just a few of the fresh, bright creations that have graced the menu at Camp Cove over the last year. But John says the café didn’t originally set out to be a unique drink destination. Instead, they started with the basics.

“The coffee comes first,” John says, sharing that Camp Cove serves Amigo beans, brought in from El Salvador and roasted in LA and serving well as an everyday coffee for traditional beverages.

But often, groups of friends come into the café all looking for something different—so the team decided to expand their menu beyond the classics. After all, as John put it, coffee is a personal thing.

“Some people want it hot, some want it iced, some with lots of cream and sugar and some with none,” John says. “Who are we to say what they should be drinking?”

Whether for newcomers stopping into the shop for the first time, or regulars considering a venture outside their comfort zone for something new, John says there’s one key element that comes with advertising out-of-the-ordinary drinks: sufficient testing beforehand, to ensure the drink is operationally functional, and reliably good.

“If people are gonna take that leap of faith and try something new, you have to dial it in beforehand,” John says. That way, customers will trust you enough to show up and try a carrot cake latte with full faith that it’ll be just as good as a flat white.

Tupi Coffee

Tupi Coffee, a Brazilian café serving ham-and-cheese filled rissoles, potato-and-chicken coxinha, and comforting pão de queijo doesn’t just have a unique menu—it also boasts a unique building, with a rooftop that allows the coffee-shop-by-day to transition into a bar on the weekends with cocktails and tapas. But for coffee lovers who are feeling adventurous, there’s another specific reason you should venture out to this Southside Park spot: the Moreno.

The drink, which tastes like a warm, comforting hug, comes hot or iced, and includes espresso, chocolate, honey, and a dash of cinnamon, along with milk of your choice. It’s a close cousin of the Mexican mocha, but the addition of honey takes it to the next level, allowing the rich drink to taste sweet without being syrupy. It’s perfect for all seasons, ready to transform into an icy sweet treat in the summer months, or a full-body-warming hot cocoa-upgrade in the winter.

Anchor & Tree

“Coffee can be interesting and beautiful without ingredients that are going to make it cost $12,” says Donovan Albert, who owns Anchor & Tree along with his husband—and the Midtown cafe’s menu reflects that.

In fact, Donovan, who had a long career in coffee roasting intelligence software before opening a shop of his own, is a big believer that coffee has plenty of flavor all on its own. Experimentation with unique drinks, then, is just that: a pathway into creative exploration of what coffee can be, without trying to make it something else entirely.

So even in experimentation, Donovan strays away from drinks drowning in syrup. Instead, the shop’s menu uses infused maple syrups, natural cane sugar, and flavored creamed honeys to add a touch of sweetness to a beverage—and still, that’s not where most of the flavor comes from. Instead, the team relies on the natural flavor of their beans, often using a co-fermentation technique to add flavor directly to the coffee fruit.

“Green coffee is like a sponge,” Donovan tells Barista Magazine. In other words, it’s ready to absorb the flavors around it.

With co-fermentation, the coffee cherry is added to a container along with, say, fresh watermelons, and microorganisms to help break it all down, left to ferment, and eventually sent to Anchor & Tree, roasted, and turned into their Watermelon Cream Soda latte, with watermelon co-fermentation beans, sparkling water, and vanilla cold foam. The concoction tastes like no other coffee drink, naturally fruity while allowing the beans’ flavor to stay strong, and fizzing up with a light sweetness from the soft vanilla topping.

Another recent menu item paired a pink bourbon cold-fermentation, another experimental technique for infusing flavor, with blueberry honey and lavender cold foam.

The flavor of their beans is carefully drawn out with an all-electric, software driven coffee roaster that currently sits in a corner of the store, allowing beans to be roasted fresh as needed. The roaster allows Donovan to set a roast curve that will be perfectly recreated by the machine, and churns out a smoother, cleaner roast—all without natural gas emissions.

The shop also uses compostable, biodegradable non-plastic takeaways cups for anyone choosing to take their beverage to-go. But Donovan recommends, if at all possible, to stay while you enjoy your drink.

“Coffee is similar to wine,” says Donovan. “It should be an experience that you sit down to enjoy.”

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Sonora Slater is a barista and freelance writer in the Sacramento region with a focus on arts and culture, travel, and what makes a place special. When she’s not writing, you can find her exploring her city, trying to grow vegetables, or rewatching Buffy the Vampire Slayer. You can find more of her work at sonoraslater.com.

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