The all-day coffee shop and bar from two Northside Social alums brought pour-overs, rotating art exhibits, and mixed drinks to downtown Takoma Park in 2017. The popular cafe has since doubled its seat count by growing into the space next door. A custom espresso machine built for the restaurant is fed a strict diet of Counter Culture Coffee, and a front counter with a white quartz top features a display case stocked with pastries and other impulse buys. Open daily from 7:30 a.m. to 9 p.m. with cocktails, beer, and wine, too. Place orders online here.

Lost Sock Roasters opened its first retail shop in 2021. It’s narrow, yet comfortable storefront in Takoma serves pour-overs showcasing beans from Ecuador and other South American countries as well as toasts, cheesy pan de yuca, and Argentine-style empanadas. The small-batch coffee company could be found long before opening its first shop, selling brewed coffee at Call Your Mother and A Baked Joint, among other places. It recently added a chic outpost inside Dupont’s Phillips Collection. View menu here.

Since opening in 2017, this cafe from Veronica Cooper (aka Miss V) has provided its Northeast neighborhood with an open, collaborative space to sip freshly brewed coffee and browse products from local vendors. The small business is deeply invested in local arts, serving as a space for live music and pop-up markets.

One of the most respected small-batch roasters in D.C., Qualia got its start out of a tiny storefront in Petworth (order pickup here). Beans come from Ethiopia, countries throughout Latin America, and locales such as the Indonesian island of Flores. Qualia also offers local delivery for retail beans within three days of roasting.

Royal is one of the first shops to occupy the all-day cafe niche in the D.C. scene. In the morning, go for Counter Culture Coffee and matcha lattes, and don’t forget to add a breakfast sandwich or arepa. There’s also a bottomless drip for $7 (8 a.m. to 3 p.m.). Sit and stay in the stylish corner cafe or order takeout or delivery.

This Eritrean-owned coffee shop debuted at the busy Shaw intersection of Rhode Island Avenue and 11th Street NW in summer 2020. The nucleus of the sit-and-stay hangout, open daily 7 a.m. to 7 p.m., is a touch screen-enabled roaster that extracts flavor out of coffee beans from Guatemala, Colombia, Ethiopia, and Brazil. Local bakery Fresh Baguette supplies goods daily.

Café Unido, which is housed in Latin market La Cosecha, is the first U.S. location of a Panamanian coffee chain. Founders Benito Bermudez and Mario Castrellon — a chef with a place on San Pellegrino’s list of Latin America’s 50 Best Restaurants — source beans directly from growers in Panama and donate a percentage of their sales to social and environmental projects. An additional outpost just opened in Shaw.

Along with a house espresso from Third Coast Coffee and its Madcap’s Six-One-Six drip coffee, Slipstream sells single-origin coffees that come in carafes accompanied by informative cards. The original in Logan Circle has a patio with prime views of a bustling corner on 14th Street NW and wall-to-wall windows inside that bathe the space in natural light. Avocado toasts and light rice bowls here are some of the best in the city, and the cafe turns into a restaurant with a cocktail bar at night. There are sibling cafes in Navy Yard and a newer location downtown. Preorder for pickup here.

This Jakarta-based coffee company with four stores in Indonesia opened its first U.S. location in downtown D.C. in 2019. Along with coffee and tea, signature drinks include a tonic and a bottled matcha with mango. There are fluffy toasts that bring milk bread to mind, and a crispy spring roll stuffed with banana and melted chocolate.

Erik Bruner-Yang’s versatile Taiwanese-Cambodian restaurant on H Street NE contains multitudes. Maketto sells streetwear, houses a record store, and has a cafe component that brews local roasts.

Virginia’s women-owned RĀKO Coffee Roasters opened up an all-day cafe in Clarendon in 2021, featuring standard espresso drinks and creative specialties like a vanilla latte dressed up with volcanic black salt. After breakfast and brunch, the cafe switches over in the late afternoon to serving glasses of wine, cocktails, and cheese boards. There’s a Capitol Hill pop-up right now too at 27 Independence Avenue SE, and new shops are on the way on 14th Street within Studio Theatre and near Amazon HQ2 in Crystal City.

In 2016, Commonwealth Joe Coffee Roasters opened a sleek Pentagon City home base with nitro cold brew on tap, a pour-over station, and a glass-enclosed cupping room. The corner cafe celebrates each holiday in a big way, and a wintery mix of drinks and decor drops the first week of December. The Arlington roaster offers customizable orders of boxed cold brew or whole bean or ground-to-order coffee from its online shop.

With a D.C. history spanning more than a century, Swing’s Coffee Roasters boasts multiple locations: two downtown and a flagship roastery in a window-lined industrial space in Del Ray. The coffee bar in the Alexandria building hosts free cupping labs and offers growler refills of cold brew.