Coffee & Treats in Tamalpais-Homestead Valley

Named in honor of the women in owner Paulo Acosta Cabezas’s life, Mamá Art Cafe creates a local hub for the output of creative energy and the intake of savory snacks. Mamá's baristas brew a lineup of specialty fair-trade organic coffees, with beans culled from Berkeley Coffee and Tea and served up hot and fresh from an array of roasts, flavors, and magic-beanstalk origins. The intimate café setting boasts an interior adorned with local and international artwork—with past art exhibitions showcasing Marta Ayala's paintings and Charles Anselmo's photographs—and the cafe regularly entertains with creative performances, such as dinner tango routines and live jazz music.

Mamá Art Cafe's tireless effort to give back to the community earned the eatery a shout-out from then-Mayor Gavin Newsom with a 2010 Latino Heritage Award for Achievement in Business, as well as honors at the 2011 Annual Hispanic Business Salute.

At Bombay Ice Cream, creamers blend traditional indian spices and fruits into frosty desserts to create alluring, uncommon ice-cream flavors. Featured on Food Network’s Ice Cream Unwrapped and in the recurring dreams of happy customers, the creamery’s eclectic flavors include bedam kesar pista—almond, saffron, pistachio—as well as fruit-based flavors such as lychee, mango, fig, and chicku, a tropical fruit. SF Weekly declared the shop one of the three best places for adventurous ice-cream lovers, suggesting that patrons "live it up and order cardamom or saffron rose—flavors you experience not so much as a taste but as a heady aroma that takes residence in your sinus cavity." Along with dishes of ice cream, servers specialize in crafting classic Indian desserts, such as falooda, an indian ice-cream float scented with delicate rose syrup and flavored seeds.

Royal Ground Coffee fills with the purr of steaming milk and the staccato crackle of beans being ground. The shop’s signature brew, Max’s Blend, is a combination of five beans, which create a smoky finish and full-bodied flavor. Espresso Maximo, a dark Viennese roast, flows smoothly, leaving a caramel aftertaste that rides a thick layer of crema. Amid the low bustle of conversation and clicking keyboards, cooks top sandwiches and hard-boiled detectives nonchalantly watch their marks through bagels.

Quetzal Internet Café insulates eager mugs with cocoa, tea, and fair-trade coffees from exotic locales including Ethiopia, Brazil, and Guatemala, all of which are available by the glass, pound, or 30-pound case. From the comfort of cozy café chairs or overstuffed couches in the upper or lower lounge, patrons' tongues can traverse the fresh terrain of eclectic café fare such as gourmet sandwiches and vegan pancakes soaked in syrup. Visitors can research the café’s resident artist on complimentary WiFi, and glasses of beer, wine, and mimosas add bubbly rushes to the evening without the hazard of spending the night in a washing machine.

If you ask Juicey Lucy’s founder, Miss Lucy, what 1 million ounces of juice can do, she’ll tell you it makes for radiant health, clear skin, and improved digestion in yogis, rock stars, media moguls, and ordinary folk looking to add vitality to their diet. Since 1994, she’s been changing lifestyles for the better with 100% organic juice and made-to-order vegan food.

Miss Lucy now focuses on infusing bodies with fresh juice that—due to the pricey airfare for apples that will only fly first class—is always made with seasonal veggies from local farms within a 200-mile radius. Customers may purchase the juices by themselves or as part of a cleanse program. Juicey Lucy’s juices can be found at various farmers' markets, special events, or in one of Lucy’s delivery fleets.

Your senses seem stronger inside Samovar Tea Lounge. Warm sunlight streams through tall windows and hushed conversation mingles with the sound of tea flowing from nubbly iron kettles, their contents perfuming the air with hints of herbs, smoke, toasted rice, flowers, and revolutions in Boston. This is owner Jesse Jacobs' vision, what he describes on his website as "an escape from the overflow of information" into an intimate space for human interaction, carved out by the global ritual of sharing tea.

This global emphasis inspires an artisanal menu of small plates and sandwiches that could conceivably be served during tea services in India and Morocco, or, in a playful turn by the chef, the Paleolithic era. It is the tea, however, that enables guests to get acquainted with international terroir without sneaking small shrubs through customs. Small, family farms in countries including Kenya, Paraguay, and Nepal, many of them organic, send their whole-leaf brews to fill Samovar's carefully curated collection. Each of its three locations serves the entire menu, which is comprehensive enough to classify oolong and pu-erh separately and boast vintage blends dating back to 1989.