Kotowa Coffee House | San Francisco — Restaurant in San Francisco

Panama, along with Costa Rica and Colombia, produces some of the region’s best coffee. In short, there’s no excuse for bad coffee here, especially when independent cafes like Paddle Coffee Roasters deliver world-class product. Yet, somehow Cafe Kotowa has failed to produce a decent cafe con leche. I’ve been to this location and its BioMuseo shop and its employees look unhappy or bored. For a corp chain, Kotowa is the Costa Coffee of Latin America, not good enough to be compared to Starbucks, Juan Valdez, or Cafe Nero.

Worse, its cafes are poorly designed. Do you want to work on your laptop or charge your phone? Good luck, because for its size, it has few available outlets and has compensated by placing a multi-charging surge protector on a single table upstairs. Want to read a book? Don’t go upstairs, where it’s too dark. Even its website looks like it was designed by a 5th grader. As of today, Cafe Kotowa appears to be the greatest advertisement possible for Juan Valdez in Panama....

Good coffee, lots of outlets for your thirsty devices (oh, you think that is irrelevant? Imagine yourself in China; you just landed with zero charges on your powerful iPhone 13 after 11 hours of flight, but your seat had no power outlet or USB, you are there with your phone dead, you don’t speak the language, hell you can not even read the names of the places, you have no way to tell anyone how to get to your hotel... Bet you will pay for a home with power outlets).

The staff is friendly, there is enough parking for Panama (where parking in small street malls can be as precious as a hug), and the second floor is...

Visited Kotowa coffee because we remember our visit in Boquete. However this location disappointed us. Customer service was lacking and were not accomodating to customer's questions about milk options. Instead of answering politely, the employee was rude and dismissive to us. He rushed through our order and gave us the wrong items. I must say this location is not foreigner friendly. I am sad to receive this service from a highly regarded cafe...