Rising Star Coffee Roasters

A roaster’s flagship inside a firehouse

Rising Star’s Hingetown café works out of a historic Cleveland firehouse, and it is the flagship of a roaster with six cafés in the city. Coffee is roasted to order, drawn from South and Central America, Africa and Indonesia, and sold by the bag and by subscription as much as by the cup. The counter reflects that: brewed coffee, cold brew, iced coffee, chai latte, dirty chai, star tea and matcha latte, plus the Cardamom Bomb, the one thing named for this location. The adaptive reuse of the building gives it more identity than a storefront, and the baristas run it as a coffee room rather than a brunch room.

Vac pot theatre and a long, comfortable room

The detail worth arriving for is the vac pot. Watching one run is a small piece of theatre, and it puts visible manual brewing into what would otherwise be a routine order, which suits a café attached to a roastery. The rest of the room is comfortable and a little funky, built for lingering, meeting or working through a morning rather than for turning tables, and service is straightforward counter service. The featured coffees are where the roaster shows its hand. El Obraje, for instance, comes from a farm in Nariño near Colombia’s southern border, which started as a wheat farm in the 1990s and became one of the first coffee farms outside Pasto in 2000. Its notes run to apricot, honey and rosemary, with mild acidity and a pleasant body.

Order the Cardamom Bomb first

Start with the Cardamom Bomb, since it is the one thing named for this location, then work deeper into the coffee. Brewed coffee or a vac pot preparation is the most direct line to the roast-to-order program, and it is worth asking what is on the bar that week. If El Obraje is available, take it: the apricot and honey notes are a clear example of the lots Rising Star puts forward. For something colder, cold brew or iced coffee. For a break from coffee, the chai latte, dirty chai, star tea and matcha latte all hold up. Pastry comes from Fire Food and Drink rather than an in-house bakery, so pair it with the drink rather than planning a meal around it, and give the firehouse room the time it deserves.