Wrecking Ball Coffee Opening a Cow Hollow Cafe

After years of pop-ups and temporary spaces, Nicholas Cho and Trish Rothgeb, the brains behind acclaimed roaster Wrecking Ball Coffee, are finally going out on their own. By the end of this month, they'll open their first full-service coffee bar in Cow Hollow, in the former That Takes the Cake space. The draw will be beans roasted by Rothgeb, who has 20 years of experience selecting and roasting beans, and barista service from Cho, who's served on the boards of all kinds of leading barista organizations and writes about coffee for Serious Eats.

Since the duo are moving to a permanent location from their current home at Marla Bakery Kitchen Communal in the Mission, it should be no surprise that Marla's Amy Brown and Joe Wolf will be the providers on the pastry front. Cho is well-known within the coffee community for his passion for pourover brewing, and the space will feature a dedicated sit-down pourover bar where caffeine-seekers can chat about what they're drinking. Cho also plans to make his iced coffee using the ice-brew method, in which hot coffee is brewed directly onto ice cubes via a pour-over cone filter. (It uses less water, to account for the meltage.) Cho, who's not a big cold-brew coffee fan, thinks it does a better job of preserving the flavor, and it's still a relatively rare phenomenon in these parts.

Other features of the space will include an 18-foot bench for sitting and savoring, and a retail component featuring Wrecking Ball beans and Kalita brewing gear from Japan (Cho and Rothgeb are the exclusive American importers for it). A handful of outdoor seats are also in the works. The couple plan to land on Union on August 1st at the latest, and possibly sooner, depending on the usual construction/permitting gauntlet.

· Wrecking Ball Debuts at Marla Bakery Kitchen Communal [~ ESF ~]
· Wrecking Ball Coffee OUT at Firehouse 8 [~ ESF ~]