Four Barrel Coffee in San Francisco, California: A Review

Four Barrel Coffee is one of those coffee roasteries that gets talked up a lot in San Francisco. Apparently, it branched off from the group that originally formed Ritual Roasters, with the owner of Four Barrel starting out roasting out of a garage before the coffee was "discovered" and became one of the hipper places in the Mission for a cuppa.

Here's the thing about Four Barrel - I just don't understand where they're going with it. The place has a minimal amount of tables, with cold steel chairs not exactly ergonomically designed for the body. The decor is a mix of local art, which is nice, and three animal heads on the wall, which is just "wtf". I mean, you have one stuffed moose head or something sitting around in the garage, you think "what the heck, let's throw this thing up there for a laugh", I mean that's one thing. But specifically going out and buying three stuffed hunter trophy heads to hang on the wall specifically to send some sort of message to the patronage? I'm not sure what message they were going for, nor what the interior's purpose really is.

There's no WiFi and not an outlet in the house. I can understand if you want to create a place that's more of a communal setting, where people come to talk rather than surf and work. The thing is, this place really isn't that either. The whole thing is like a McDonalds, just with less color. It's all hard angles, the baristas are all hard hipster attitude, the whole thing seems to be designed to repel you as fast as possible. If you just want a cup to go I guess that's fine, but if the place is really trying to become some sort of gathering place, there's really nothing wrong with some comfortable seating, good lighting and welcoming decoration. And the calculated "too hip for you" barista attitude ... seriously, when is enough going to be enough with this? Pretty soon, Starbucks will be training their baristas to act like this as part of their corporate policy. Bank on it. I bet it happens within two years. I don't care for fake corporate enforced cheery politeness myself, but why do you people like to swing so hard to the other end and be abused while buying your coffee? There is such a thing as a happy medium, y'know?

That leaves us with the coffee. Recently I sampled a cup at Dynamo Donuts, with which they seem to be intertwined in a business partnership, and I thought it was overly dark in a bad way, too acidy and a little too oily. But I thought, maybe it was just an off day, or the stuff that gets farmed out to Dynamo isn't the top of the shelf. After sampling another cup here (and paying $2 for the privilege), I'm now convinced the coffee itself just isn't that good. Compounding the problem is the weirdly minimalist selection of additives - you get only whole milk and brown sugar, absolutely nothing else!

Even the website is cold and unwelcoming. It consists solely of a photo of some of their crap metal chairs (no text ... too hip for text), with only a vague email link and a link to their extremely basic storefront where you can buy bags of beans via the mail. Like all of hipsterdom, this place seems to be trying too hard to make a statement rather than just relaxing and being cool. I guess it wouldn't matter much if the coffee was really as killer as people claim, but it isn't, at least I didn't think so. Definitely not worth $2 for a regular sized cup, that's for sure.

Four Barrel Coffee
375 Valencia Street
San Francisco, CA 94103
# 415-252-0800
http://www.fourbarrelcoffee.com/