Saero

Saero runs a manual-brew program and never advertises the fact — even the roaster, The Little Marionette, has to be read off the drink list. Ten months in, with no bags to take home, everything this room has to say arrives in the cup.

• A named-lot hand pour
• Tea taken as seriously as the coffee
• Historic core wandering
• An early look at a new room

The shop runs a manual-brew program, and the roaster behind it is The Little Marionette — a name that lives on the menu rather than in any promotional copy. The board runs unusually tea-forward for a coffee bar (layered matcha, hojicha einspanner, earl grey), and retail beans are not sold.

Saero sits on South Spring Street in the historic core, where the older building stock does some of the work for a careful tenant. Ten months in, the bar and the room are both young enough to still be changing shape.