Hi NRG

A morning coffee bar inside a wine bar

Hi NRG, pronounced high energy, takes over the front of High Treason in San Francisco’s Inner Richmond during the mornings and runs a specialty coffee counter out of a wine bar’s room. The programme is short and precise rather than broad, built on barista precision instead of a long menu, and the founders had built a following on Clement Street before this arrangement. The filter highlight is a washed Ethiopian single origin, the style that gives bright, floral, citrus-led cups, and it is the reason to come if you want a clean single-origin coffee rather than a milk drink. Espresso classics cover the everyday orders. The whole thing was set up as a neighbourhood coffee anchor while its owners work toward a permanent space of their own.

Cafe de olla beside the espresso

The drink that separates this counter from a standard espresso bar is cafe de olla, the Mexican preparation made with cinnamon and piloncillo, unrefined whole cane sugar. Putting it next to a washed Ethiopian filter is the clearest statement the menu makes: a traditional spiced coffee and a modern specialty cup pulled at the same bar, with neither treated as the novelty. Seating is limited and the service is counter-led, so the visit is short by design: order at the bar, watch the drink being made, take a seat if one is free. The wine-bar setting gives the mornings a pleasantly borrowed quality, since the room is furnished for evenings.

Order the cafe de olla first

Take the cafe de olla on a first visit. The cinnamon and piloncillo give it a profile nothing else on the board matches, and it is the drink that explains why this counter exists rather than another espresso bar. On a second visit, order the washed Ethiopian as filter to see the other half of the programme, clean and light where the olla is spiced and sweet. Espresso classics are the steady middle. Read the menu as a concise programme: a single-origin Ethiopian filter, cafe de olla and espresso drinks from a compact counter inside a wine bar. The pop-up is in transition, with a permanent corner space planned nearby where coffee, wine and weekend DJ sets are meant to share one room, so the current version is worth catching while it still runs out of somebody else’s bar.