Pinhole Coffee
The house drip here is a blend Linea Caffe built for JoEllen Depakakibo's wedding in 2017. It splits her love of Ethiopian coffees against her wife Robin's for Central and South America. They called it Masarap, Tagalog for delicious. She opened the shop on 12 September 2014, in a building that went up in the 1880s as Max Breithaupt's butcher shop.
Why go
Depakakibo worked behind other people's bars before she opened this one. One spell was managing for Blue Bottle.2 Sprudge named her a Sprudge Twenty honoree in 2021. She used the interview to say what she built it around. Being a Barista for 19 years I've seen how passionate Baristas are and how loyal they can be to a company. In return, a lot of times, I see companies not give as much as they should to the Baristas.
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She buys from friends. She does not roast. Grand Coffee's Las Pilas Guatemala pulls the regular espresso and Linea's Big Calm handles decaf. The pour-over bar rotates single origins from guest roasters around the country. Bicchieri found a Cat and Cloud lot from Santa Cruz on it in early 2026.1
The name comes from pinhole photography, a small hole throwing a whole image. Cesar Hernandez describes the room. One wall is colored blocks like stacked Lego. A neon halo hangs overhead, and a mural shows a man drinking coffee in a mug-shaped car.3
Order this / avoid
- Order: the Masarap drip.
- Order: whatever single origin is on pour-over that week.
- Order: the June Bug in summer, a sparkling espresso tonic sweetened with juniper berry syrup, $7 in September 2023.3
- Avoid: expecting a quiet corner to work in.
What locals & experts say
- Paolo Bicchieri, Eater SF, adding it to his seventeen best coffee shops in January 2026:
JoEllen Depakakibo's 12-year-old Bernal Heights cafe is a colorful testament to Bay Area specialty coffee.
2 - Julia Chen, The Infatuation, February 2024, puts it among the twenty best in the city and sends people for the flat white, on benches under the rainbow walls.5
- Johnny Randolph put her name forward for that Sprudge Twenty, calling it the quintessential neighborhood cafe in Bernal Heights.4
Good to know
- Getting in: a counter, no bookings, with seating outside.
- Where: 231 Cortland Avenue, in Bernal Heights.
- Pastries: bought in, from Bernal Bakery, Butter Block, Dynamo Donut and Nana Joes.
Verdict
could-visit — Come off-peak if you want a seat. This is a neighborhood cafe first; do not cross the city for it.