Liberation Coffee House
Curator’s note
ORA hung this whole room in overlapping sheer fabric panels and won a 2023 AIA National Small Project Award for it, serious design attention spent on a cafe whose reason to exist is being somebody's first hospitality job. The cup is the quieter half: two Verve house blends, no single origins, no pour-over on the menu.
Verve Coffee Roasters' Buena Vista dark roast, pulled as espresso, with s'mores, dark chocolate and caramelized notes.
Freshly baked ciabatta bread with scrambled eggs, cheddar cheese, bacon jam, applewood smoked bacon and arugula.
The coffee
The cafe does not roast: coffee comes from Verve Coffee Roasters in Santa Cruz, with Buena Vista on espresso and Streetlevel on drip, both house blends rather than single origins. Retail bags carry no origin, varietal, or roast date.
- Streetlevel
- Medium
Clementine · Red Apple · Honeycomb
- Buena Vista Dark Roast
- Dark
Chocolate · Red Apple · Maple
The room
ORA drew the room and took an AIA Small Project Award for it: overlapping sheer fabric panels hung to wash the space in a gradient of color like a California sunset. Award architecture on a 1,600-square-foot corner cafe staffed by graduates of a three-month training program is not the usual order of things.
The vibe
Photos
People
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