As far as my western American mind- set goes, if you’re not at a café to wake up, you’re there to meet a friend, or work quietly on a laptop, or even just geek-out on coffee. If you eat anything, it’s probably from a pastry case—maybe just a bagel with cream cheese.
So when you get great food at a coffee shop, it feels like someone just showed up with a giant check.
This is what happened at Guilder Cafe. I’d walked by the Northeast Fremont shop and noticed the pretty packaging of the Junior’s Roasted Coffee bags—mathy-looking tricolor line drawings, rocketships and boats on white bags—and my coffee geek roommate and I decided to try the goods.
We chatted with roaster/co-owner Mike Nelson about Guilder’s varied, complex coffees that are currently roasted in Southeast (soon to be roasted in-house). The coffees come from various farms and regions, the selection informed by Nelson’s academic research in environmental science. In true café fashion, the conversation then turned, as always, to Star Wars and Stranger Things.
