Coffee blended with fruits and flowers and tea drinks topped with “clouds” are some of the fun offerings at a new cafe in Oakland, Olivia Coffee & Flower.
The walk-by-quick-and-you’ll-miss-it spot opened this fall in the city’s Pill Hill neighborhood, amid plentiful clinics and medical buildings. Tired workers looking for a pick-me-up will find espresso drinks, matcha and pour-over coffee, plus sandwiches and Asian-inspired snacks like kimchi toast with garlic-butter-chive spread ($8) and Korean melon and green-grape burrata salad ($13).
The pour-over bar features coffees from Ethiopia and Columbia and elsewhere, some with rather exotic themes ($7-$9). There’s a Zarza Pink Bourbon Thermal Shock Washed variety, for instance, and a Los Patios Peach Geisha Honey coffee blended with peach concentrate and Sumatra Bener Meriah Gayo Aalamin fermented with powdered jasmine.
Some of the lattes come with foamy cloudlike layers, for the meteorologist in all of us. Other drinks mix in Asian flavors like black sesame, Jeju Island green tangerine and rose-cream taro. Sometimes, as with the iced-banana milk latte, they’re topped with pieces of caramelized fruit.
There is a modest selection of baked goods, like housemade tiramisu and cookies and other treats brought in from the small-batch popup Chestnut Bake House. Larger bites include pastrami or caprese sandwiches ($13-$16) and bagel sandos with all the fixins from Boichik Bagels ($8.50-$16, the latter for lox).
A shop-within-the-shop will soon offer floral arrangements; right now it’s open for flower preorders. The cafe is also dog-friendly and even has its own mascot, Gurumi, the owner’s Old English Sheepdog.
Details: Open 7:30 a.m.-3 p.m. Monday-Friday at 371 30th St., Oakland; instagram.com/olivia_coffeeflower