Known as “the coffee mafia” for its practice of strong-arming its way onto restaurant menus in town—not to mention unsubstantiated rumors of shady business practices—Caffé Vita might lead you to expect coffee as bad-ass as its reputation. The coffee is certainly not terrible—fine restaurants all over town serve this stuff, and we’ve all stopped in their five locations for an espresso on occasion—but it’s not the best in town either.

Hipsters are a funny lot, and you’ll find the moodiest of them here at Caffé Vita moonlighting as baristas. If you don’t mind a bit of attitude with your morning latte art, then by all means, the quiet upstairs loft in the Capitol Hill location is a perfectly pleasant place to pass the hours.

With many robust, smooth, farm-direct and fair trade blends, Caffé Vita is also ideal for the coffee drinker with a conscience. If observing beautiful Cap Hill denizens sporting carefully-mussed bedhead is more your speed, you can’t find a better spot than the sidewalk tables here on a sunny day. If it’s pure coffee bliss you’re after, you might be a touch disappointed.

A warning, or perhaps a perk: unisex bathrooms.