Goodman Coffee Roasters - St. Elmo

The free parking lot is in back, and regulars warn you'll miss it. Goodman Coffee in the St. Elmo neighborhood of Chattanooga roasts its own beans on-site, with the Goodman family handling the travel for sourcing trips, and the operation reads as a small careful neighborhood cafe rather than a destination stop on a tourist's coffee crawl, even if it ends up on plenty of those crawls anyway. The indoor room is cozy and gets tight at busy times, which is a fair warning if you're planning to bring a laptop or a meeting. The backyard patio is laid-back and the better seat in good weather, and it's where the regulars head when the sun is out. Background music suits work or studying. There are no outdoor outlets, so plan accordingly if you need to plug in. The pour-over program is the careful technical order for serious coffee drinkers. The dark roast Brazilian is the steady drip option that anchors the menu. The banana iced latte is the menu surprise that people come back for and the order to try if you haven't been. The iced caramel latte is the sweeter standard for regulars who want something more conventional. The earl grey tea and London Fog give the non-espresso crowd somewhere to land. A pumpkin pie latte runs year-round if that's your inclination, which it isn't for everyone. On the food side, the ham-and-cheese croissant and the bacon-and-cheese croissant move alongside the scones throughout the morning. Coffee tourists doing a Chattanooga shop crawl tend to put this on the list, and it earns its spot. If you're planning Zoom calls or counting on easy street parking out front, this isn't the day's pick, and you should pick a different shop with more elbow room. If you want a quiet pour-over and a patio seat in St. Elmo on a good-weather morning, find the back lot, walk in through the front, and order the banana iced latte once.