Little Green Bean

Point Arena fogs in heavy off the Pacific, and Little Green Bean's roast smell cuts through it. Road-trippers on Highway 1 describe smelling it before they see the storefront, then following the trail to the door. The owner, Debra, runs it with her brother, and they roast on site on Main Street in a coastal town small enough that the shop is one of the few stops on the main drag. Seating is essentially nothing. One indoor chair. A single outdoor table with two chairs. That is the seating plan, and regulars are explicit about it. This is not a place to sit and work. The drink lineup is built around drip-to-order and pour-over, with Mexican and Peruvian single origins among the regulars and a rotating cast of beans from around the world filling out the rest. Chocolates and pastries handle the food side. The Mexican pour-over and the Peruvian pour-over are the two orders to know if you want to taste what the room does best. The visit is short on purpose. Pull off Highway 1, breathe in the roast, order a pour-over, take a bag of single-origin home, and get back on the road north or south. Groups will not fit. Laptop workers will not have a table. Solo road-trippers and small couples who care about a real cup of coffee on the California coast will have found exactly what they wanted, and the bag they take home is the souvenir that earns the detour. Debra and her brother are the people behind the counter, the smell is the marketing, and the fog is the reason you found the door. The chocolates and pastries do not pretend to be a kitchen. They are what works alongside a pour-over for the kind of short visit the room is built for. A bag of single-origin from somewhere unexpected, ground or whole, finishes the stop and rides shotgun for the next leg of Highway 1.