By Thomas Shess, PillartoPost.org Coffee Editor--Some coffeehouses have to introduce themselves.
Little While doesn’t quite have that luxury. It occupies 3019 Adams Avenue, a North Park address many serious San Diego coffee drinkers already know.
Until recently, this was Hawthorn Coffee. I was an early Hawthorn fan. The place reminded me of the sort of coffeehouse I knew along Grant Avenue in San Francisco—unpretentious, urban, a little bohemian, and devoted to the idea that drinking coffee could be an activity unto itself. Then Hawthorn became popular.
With popularity came the computer squatters: customers who bought one cup of coffee, opened a laptop and established corporate headquarters at a table for the next three hours.
Eventually, those of us who wanted to drink coffee, talk, read the paper or simply enjoy the room sometimes found there wasn’t a chair left. One coffee, one electrical outlet and apparently a 20-year lease on the table. So I went elsewhere.
Now the address has been reborn as Little While, and it is worth coming back. The shop comes from the Sweet & Savory Collective, the people behind Pop Pie Co. and Stella Jean’s Ice Cream. Little While roasts its own coffee and has paired a serious coffee program with an ambitious pastry counter.
The room itself is bright, handsome and warm—natural wood, sunlight and enough design to feel considered without turning the place into a showroom. Most important, the coffee is treated seriously.
Espresso and pour-over devotees will find plenty to investigate, while the pastry case may destroy whatever resistance you arrived with. There is something fitting about the name Little While. A good coffeehouse should be a place where you can spend one.
Just preferably not your entire working day.
Little While Coffee & Pastries 3019 Adams Ave., San Diego.
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Illustration: F. Stop Fitzgerald, PillarttoPost.org
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