12 Cups of Cozy

Rounding up regional coffeehouses serving more than just a great cup of joe.

Written by Nora Heston Tarte

A beloved coffeehouse can feel like a safe haven. Whether it’s your favorite corner shop or a place where the beans are so delicious it’s worth the trek across town, coffeehouses are about more than what’s served in the cup. While the drinks can bring people back through the doors again and again, it’s the service and the atmosphere that make someone want to pull up a chair and spend a few hours on their laptop or scroll the latest TikTok videos while the baristas create their rhythmic bangs and hisses in the background.

We visited a dozen coffeehouses across Northern Nevada and Lake Tahoe and sampled not only their beverages but the other intangibles that set them apart from your average chain.

MORE THAN COFFEE

Coffeebar – Truckee, Reno, Bay Area
For 15 years, Greg Buchheister has owned and operated Coffeebar. What started as a back-alley coffeehouse on Jibboom Street in Truckee, inspired by personal experiences in Italy, has morphed into a larger enterprise with 10 locations across California and Nevada. The roastery, opened in 2018, is on Haskell Street in Reno.

Buchheister took his dedication to creating the café atmosphere he experienced in Italy so seriously that he even began selling gelato at its Mount Rose Street location.

Goods aside, Buchheister takes an ethical approach to the coffee business, focusing on directly sourcing coffee beans whenever possible — cutting out the middleman and purchasing from farmers in countries such as Guatemala and Ethiopia, which keeps more money in farmers’ pockets and supports a better quality of life overseas.

Coffees from Coffeebar focus on the seasons. Much like with other produce, different locations at different times of year produce different coffee beans. By learning how these climates affect taste, the Coffeebar staff members can produce creative specialty flavors from places such as Ethiopia, Guatemala, Thailand, and Nicaragua. (Read more about Coffeebar’s roastery in this issue.)

If you’re stopping in, try a customer favorite, the banana bread latte. Buchheister calls it “cozy, sweet nostalgia in a cup.” The drink is made from house banana bread syrup with a real banana purée, brown sugar, and vanilla before it’s paired with espresso and finished with a sprinkle of cinnamon.

“It’s like a fresh slice of banana bread, made to sip,” he says.

This is an excerpt from the original article, “12 Cups of Cozy,” published by edible Reno-Tahoe.