This Charlotte Coffee Shop Made Food And Wine’s Best In US List

CHARLOTTE, NC — After a process that took more than two years, Food & Wine Magazine has rounded up nearly 100 of the best cafes, coffee shops and espresso bars in the United States and two of them are in North Carolina.

Writer David Landsel visited thousands of different coffee shops over the past two years, describing his experience as “a wild, highly-caffeinated road trip across the country.”

Here are the coffee meccas that made the list in our state:

• Orchard Coffee, 39 Depot Street, Waynesville, NC, No. 4 — Says Landsel: “Having made quite the splash in the industry rather early on in his career, for his next act, Cabell Tice chose to make one hell of a bold move, bringing his family across the country to a town they knew very little about, where he had purchased a building they had never seen. They’d live upstairs, they’d renovate the downstairs, his mother would come, all the way from Hawaii, where he was born, to help out with the kids, and somehow, someway, it’d all get done. Last spring, it did, and now this relatively quiet community in the Smokies, a half hour west of Asheville, has one of the finest small town coffee shops in America. Coffee comes from down the hill, so to speak, at Methodical Coffee in Greenville, SC, with featured roasters rotating in and out.”

• HEX Coffee, 125 Remount Road, Charlotte — Says Landsel: “One of North Carolina’s most exciting roasters prefers to keep a relatively small, sustainable footprint, as they continue to grow—drop by the espresso bar inside a local bottle shop, or the roasting plant, where you can always grab a cup of the day’s brew from the honor bar.”

Landsel compiled the list for Food & Wine Magazine by completing anonymous visits to each shop, with no offers of free samples or “undue influence over the process.” He did, though, consult with a collection of the best and brightest in the coffee industry.

Sey Coffee, in Brooklyn, New York, took home the award for the best coffee shop in the country.

The overall top 10 included locations in seven different states.

1. Sey Coffee, Brooklyn, NY
2. Dayglow, Los Angeles, CA
3. Cat & Cloud, Santa Cruz, CA
4. Orchard Coffee, Waynesville, NC
5. Mom ‘n ‘Em Coffee, Cincinnati, OH
6. Arcade Coffee, Riverside, CA
7. Leslie Coffee Co., Wichita, KS
8. King State Coffee, Tampa, FL
9. Daydream Surf Shop, Newport Beach, CA
10. Purple Llama, Chicago, IL