Little While

The name comes from an idea about fleeting moments, though nothing about the coffee is casual: Steven Torres trained with Drew Dodson and the Roastronix team before taking the lead on the roasting himself. The single origins rotate and the menu will not print them, pointing instead to a card at the counter, which makes a favorite hard to order twice.

Every coffee here is roasted at the back of the shop on a Stronghold S9X, the house operation running under the name Little While Coffee Roasters, with no outside roaster on the menu. Fresh roast goes into the hoppers of three Mazzer Kony SG grind-by-weight grinders or into Weber Workshops Bean Cellar single-dose tubes, and espresso pulls on a La Marzocco Linea PB with integrated scales behind a Nucleus NCD distributor and a PUQpress.

Sunlight through a front wall of windows does most of the lighting, and the rest is wood: booth seating, wall paneling, and a gantry of soft globe lights over the wood-fronted counter. Most of the 1,200 square feet is given over to guests, which is the choice a room makes when it wants people to stay.