Nagadi Coffee, LLC

Nagadi roasts coffee. The shop part is secondary, and the staff would tell you so before they steered you toward anything else. This is a Silver Spring roastery on Fraser Avenue where regulars stop weekly for whatever rotating bean selection has just come off the roaster, and where customers ship beans to family overseas, which is the kind of detail that tells you exactly what the place is about and who it is for. There are no syrups. There are no creamers. If that sounds like a problem, this is not your shop and the staff will not pretend otherwise. What is on offer is drip, mocha, and pour-overs made from beans they roasted that week. Order beans ahead, because they roast in small enough batches that walking in cold can mean walking out without what you came for, especially toward the end of the week. The room is warm in the way small operations get warm when the people running them care about the product first and the décor not at all. Friendly counter. Local artist work on the walls. Regulars greeted by name. It is not a laptop place and was never built to be one. It is a buying-and-drinking place, which is what a roastery should be when it takes itself seriously and trusts its customers to take it seriously back. The rotating single-origin selection is the actual menu, and the staff will talk through what's on if you ask. For drinkers who want coffee straight, want to taste what fresh roasting does to a bean within a week of pulling it off the heat, and want a relationship with the people doing the work, Nagadi is the one. For anyone hoping to settle in with a laptop, a flavored syrup, or a creamer pitcher on the counter, the door is the same direction you came from.