Side Practice Coffee

A multiroaster bar in Ravenswood

The bar at Side Practice runs as a multiroaster, which is unusual enough in a corner cafe to be the first thing worth knowing. Coffees come from the Chicago roasters New Math, Four Letter Word and Angora, and from Friedhats and Manhattan Coffee Roasters in the Netherlands, so the espresso and the filter change with whatever has landed. The equipment backs it up: a two-group La Marzocco Linea, Mazzer grinders, a Fetco batch brewer and Kalita Wave for pour-over. Standard orders run espresso, americano, cortado, cappuccino and latte. The signature side is where the shop's own voice comes through, with the Manila Matcha Latte built on house ube syrup, plus ube, pandan vanilla and flan lattes. Loose-leaf tea comes from Volition Tea. The cafe opened in 2020, after a spring launch slipped into summer.

840 square feet with a retail wall

The room is small, about 840 square feet, and its character comes from detail rather than scale: plants, steel-and-black equipment, art on the walls, stickers on the fridge and benches cut from skateboard shapes. A retail case built by the owner holds photographs, streetwear and other goods from local makers, which is the clearest statement of what the name means. The idea behind the place is a corner cafe that shows off the community's side practices, and it works as a platform for pop-ups, small businesses, artists, designers and entrepreneurs of colour as much as it works as a coffee bar. In a garden-unit space with a living-room layout and limited seating, it stays work-friendly without pretending to be a co-working room. Eater included it in its 2026 coffee guide.

Order the Manila Matcha Latte

Start with the Manila Matcha Latte, the drink that explains the bar. It uses the shop's own ube syrup, and it sits inside a wider push to give beans and flavours of Asian origin real space on a Chicago menu; the owner is Filipino and built the signature list around that. Ube, pandan vanilla and flan lattes follow the same thread, and there is a matcha made with pandan vanilla and macadamia milk. If you would rather drink it straight, the pour-over bar and the batch brew will tell you more about whichever roasters are on rotation. Food comes from partners rather than an in-house kitchen: croissants, quiches, danishes and muffins from Phlour Bakery, ube doughnuts from Gurnee Donuts and kolaches from Howdy Kolache. That turns a coffee stop into a short tour of Chicago makers.