Best Coffee Shops in Sacramento: 14 Places Locals Keep Recommending
8 sources researched
Someone asks r/Sacramento where to drink coffee every few months, and the answers keep landing on the same few blocks of downtown and Midtown. The best-documented version is 
a visitor's tour of 12 cafés in December 2025, ranked in reverse order of preference on one criterion — a straight espresso shot — which drew 768 net upvotes and a long argument in the replies. Two of the names readers kept pushing back with, Temple and Old Soul, were not on the tour at all.
Quotes
Quotes“quality driven multi-roaster shop in the heart of Sacramento serving exceptional coffees, low intervention wines, and a small seasonally focused food menu”
“If you could visit only one coffee-focused cafe in Sacramento, this is THE place.”
“Try Temple, I think you'll like it. They roast their own.”
“Camellia, Mast, Temple, Seasons, the Mill and Pachamama are top notch and roast their own beans (there are many others too).”
“As a person who likes sweet and creamy coffee with added/seasonal flavors, I would reverse this list almost exactly.”
Scorpio takes the top of the list with 20 mentions, ahead of Temple on 16 and Old Soul on 11. The spread is tight enough that the order matters less than the pattern behind it: 11 of the 14 roast the beans they pour, while 3 buy their coffee in from specialist roasters and rotate it, so the espresso there changes with the guest lot rather than the season.
3 that pour someone else's coffee
1 mention = 1 comment recommending the café, for any reason and replies included, complaints excluded; 4 r/Sacramento threads posted Dec 2025 – Oct 2026, 214 of 347 comments read, 102 of them recommend a named shop; read 5 Nov 2026. The quotes under each table are one verbatim line per shop — the December tour’s own write-up for the 12 it visited, a reply for the 2 it skipped.
| Cafés | Mentions | Beans |
|---|---|---|
| 20 | Sey, Regalia, DAK, Hydrangea | |
| 9 | Perc, Presta, Hydrangea | |
| 7 | About 25 guest lots |
In their words — one verbatim line per shop
- Scorpio — "By a decent margin, this was my favorite cafe of the dozen." — u/bznelson91
- Immortal — "immortal has my fav coffee by far (but I only drink drip)" — u/BBBBKKKK
- Burnside — "futuristic decor and a vibe that is like nothing else" — u/bznelson91
11 that roast what they pour
| Roasters with a café | Mentions |
|---|---|
| 16 | |
| 11 | |
| 8 | |
| 8 | |
| 7 | |
| 7 | |
| 6 | |
| 5 | |
| 5 | |
| 5 | |
| 4 |
In their words
- Temple — "which many consider the iconic Sacramento cafe" — u/point9repeatingis1
- Old Soul — "Weatherstone has such a dream of a patio" — u/tenaciousdreambeam
- Mast — "Great coffee, awful seating." — u/1420cats
- Pachamama — "the Guatemala beans from Pachamama is still the best I’ve had anywhere" — u/aairricc
- Anchor & Tree — "They do a co-fermentation process that produces some of the most complex and delicious roasts" — u/Darbypea
- Seasons — "The cafe itself is quaint and beautiful." — u/bznelson91
- Milka — "Situated in a very classic repurposed home on G Street" — u/bznelson91
- The Mill — "the Colombian pink bourbon shot I had was a knockout in the cup" — u/bznelson91
- Camellia — "This cafe had a very cool setup and vibe." — u/bznelson91
- Chocolate Fish — "They’ve won the golden bean award/nomination etc for years!" — u/Odd-Display4691
- Qisa — "Qisa coffee is my personal favorite" — u/theabsoluteworstgay
Facts
FactsTour and replies disagree — The December tour ranked 12 cafés on a single straight espresso shot and drew 768 net upvotes, and its replies immediately added the two names the tour skipped, Temple and Old Soul (
thread).Twenty-five lots, vacuum sealed — Burnside's multiroaster menu runs about 20 to 25 coffees, most of them experimental post-harvest lots, single-dosed and vacuum-sealed out of frozen stock (
Daily Coffee News).
Temple began in 2005 — Sean Kohmescher founded Temple Coffee in Sacramento in 2005, and Chocolate Fish opened in 2008 after Andy and Edie Baker moved from New Zealand; both roast for their own cafés (
Temple,
Chocolate Fish).
Voices
VoicesVerdict · Reddit · r/Sacramento — Straight espresso, little cup — The tour's author judged every café on a plain espresso and says he rarely gets coffee out that beats what he makes at home, which is why his lowest rows are shops that hide the shot in milk (
thread).Verdict · Reddit · r/Sacramento — Ten years in specialty — A commenter who says he worked a decade in specialty coffee calls Scorpio the best in the city for espresso quality, the most repeated verdict in the thread (
comment).Advice · Reddit · r/Sacramento — Buy bags from roasters — Commenters split the list by whether you can take the beans home, naming Temple, Old Soul and Chocolate Fish as bag stops while treating the multi-roaster cafés as places to drink rather than to shop (
comment).Objection · Reddit · r/Sacramento — Sweet drinkers reverse it — The top critical reply says anyone who likes sweet, creamy or flavoured coffee would reverse the ranking almost exactly, a caveat that fits a list built on straight shots (
comment).
AI-written from public sources and may contain errors. Check the sources yourself.
