Rendezvous Coffee

The name is the French word for a meeting, and the founder found hers days into a hike high in the mountains of southern India, where guides who shared no language with her group built a fire and made everyone coffee. The board now runs thirty-odd flavored lattes and steamers, butterbeer through pumpkin crème brûlée, a menu written for the meeting rather than for the method.

Rendezvous roasts what it pours, by hand and in small batches, and the four bags it sells online go as far as region and process and then stop: an Ethiopia from Aricha Woreda in the Gedeo Zone, a natural Brazil out of Minas Gerais credited to nearly 7,000 growers, a washed Colombia decaf from Popayán, and a house blend, with no farm, no varietal and no roast date printed on any of them. On the bar that comes out as the full classic espresso set with drip coffee, a separate decaf drip and cold brew, and no cone or filter station anywhere on the list.

The address is the best thing here: Suite A of the historic Santa Fe Depot, downtown Hemet's old rail station, a better building than most coffee bars get to open inside. The shop's own pictures stay tight on the cup, so a cane bistro chair and the corner of a wood table are all of the inside that ever shows.