Best Independent Coffee Shops in San Francisco

Saint Frank Coffee

Saint Frank has been a Russian Hill fixture since 2013, and the Polk Street flagship still feels like the argument for what a serious San Francisco coffee bar can be: a tall, narrow room washed in light from ceiling skylights, herringbone wood wainscoting running down both walls, and a planter of pothos trailing over the doorway to the mezzanine stairs. The long white bar is all business — a row of pour-over drippers on scales down one end, gold-lettered menus clipped to clipboards at the register, and bags of their own roasts stacked by the espresso machine. Order a pour-over and it arrives on a bamboo tray in a glass pitcher with a handmade ceramic mug, and even the to-go cups get the gilded blackletter F — the same gold-leaf lettering painted across the big bay window, behind which half the neighborhood seems to be working, chatting, or lingering over a flight at the sidewalk bistro tables.