Black Wolf Coffee in Santa Rosa, California: A Cafe Review

Black Wolf Coffee is the last remnant of Wolf Coffee, a local Sonoma County chain that went out of business (exception of this one last location) in 2008. They and Deaf Dog were basically the two major contenders against the hegemony of Starbucks, and Starbucks ruthlessly drove them both out of business by opening over 9,000 locations in every square block of every major city in the county, thus making it next to impossible to get a decent cup of coffee in the North Bay unless you brew it yourself.

This one lone stalwart holds fast, however, in the Coddingtown Mall in Santa Rosa. The ambiance is lacking, being situated at one of the front entrances to the mall, with nothing around but barred shops and closed kiosks in the morning when most people will seek out their java. The coffee also isn't quite as good as I remember it being at the old 4th Street location in downtown Santa Rosa - both the French Roast and the house blend are the sort of dark, oily, semi-bitter roast that is better than Starbucks but still isn't anything to shout about. I feel like it's important to support the resistance, however, and as it happens they also have really excellent bagels here at a fair price.

For 3.75 you can get a quite acceptable 12 oz. house coffee and a crispy bagel, which the barista will toast to your specified level of toastiness. They also have lattes, espresso, hot chocolate, iced coffee, muffins and a few assorted pastries. The food selection is pretty limited, and gets worse as the morning wears on into the afternoon, but the baristas who work here in the mornings seem to actually really know what they are doing and take pride in making their drinks properly.

I really wish they had more food on offer, but it's a reliable cup of joe in an area where that's hard to come by (if you don't want Starbucks), and the bagels are worth a stop by themselves. Viva la coffee resistance.