SOTToVOCE CAFE

Espresso in the morning, wine by evening

The bar runs on Italian rhythms, scaled down to one room. Espresso, cappuccino, latte and macchiato come first, with pastries beside them; paninis, bruschetta and small bites carry the middle of the day; wine and spirits take over as the light goes. There are no pour-over flights, no single-origin board and no cold brew programme. This is an espresso bar in the Italian sense, where coffee is a habit rather than a tasting exercise. The food is chosen to work in both directions, which is why paninis, bruschetta and small plates dominate the list: they sit as easily beside an espresso at eleven as they do beside a glass of red at six.

Sottovoce means under the voice, or softly, which is a fair description of the register: quieter than a roastery, more relaxed than a restaurant, and set up so that one room can do both jobs without rearranging itself.

Inside a Williams building

The Palm Springs room sits in The Shops at 1345, a design-led retail and dining complex housed in a building by Emerson Stewart Williams, the architect behind several of the city's modernist landmarks, among them the Frank Sinatra house. The setting is part of what you are buying: a visit here usually forms one stop on a wider circuit of design and shopping rather than a destination on its own.

The business started on El Paseo in Palm Desert and opened this second address in September 2025, carrying the same format across with it, coffee bar first and wine bar second.

What to order

Build the order around a panini. It is the food the place is known for, and it works as well with a mid-morning cappuccino as with an early evening glass of wine. Add bruschetta or small bites if there are several of you, since they are made for sharing across a table rather than eating alone.

Take a pastry if the visit is a coffee visit, and wine or a spirit if it has turned into aperitivo. The coffee to order is the Italian standard, an espresso at the bar or a cappuccino before noon, and the appeal of the place is precisely that it asks for no more decisions than that. Come once for coffee and once for a glass, and you will have seen the whole of it.