Pink Owl Coffee — Restaurant in San Rafael

Great coffees! Cute spot. Friendly staff.

Only read on if you care about bagels. (And now I seem to have written more on coffee at the end.)

The New Yorker in me requires me to inform other East Coasters of the following. The "Everything" Bagel at Pink Owl should be called the "Both" Bagel, 'cause it's just sesame seeds and poppy seeds, (and to be fair and honest maybe a teensy bit of dehydrated onion and/or garlic, burnt beyond recognition by toasting, which is certainly not the fault of staff, but rather inadherence in preparation to dehydrated seasoning size standards in bagel toppings). Most notably though, it was missing salt—a key component of the classic and standard Everything Bagel, (which admittedly never actually includes everything as that would be a heavy burden for a bagel to bear). I can't take a star away for any of this though as it's as close an approximation of a real bagel as can be found west of the Mississippi. I'd have another, but maybe just sesame.

Coffee! Very good. I had a generous mug of the Costa Rican light/medium roast. It was delicious. Nutty and bold and more like a medium+ roast to me, but the flavors still came though nicely. Since I've lived in Colombia it's become clear to me that American roasting conventions lean heavily towards the overroasted norms of $$ (that was meant to be Star()bucks($$), not a$$, btw, although we can all agree that's what their coffee tastes like without a ton of the additional flavors they encourage you to pump into it) and the like. I hope the Colombian beans I've gotten to go are on the lighter roast side. I'll edit this if there's any substantial news to be had about them.

Just a last note. Look at a whole bean of coffee from wherever in the U.S. and the level of roast the spot/brand claims, then Google coffee roasting chart and see the difference. Lighter roasted coffees are actually stronger (more caffeine in there) and more flavorful. I'm not talking about blond roasts or anything absurd, but beans that are more of a milk chocolate color than bakers chocolate or coal. Pink Owl seems to get this more correct than most spots. I could be placing this rant in the wrong review, but, as we say in Español, "ya que."

If you've read this whole thing I'd like to send you a nice thank you note. Do please send...

First, congratulations to Pink Owl for opening the new Downtown location. This stop actually was not a planned part of my late morning Downtown San Rafael fun day, but it became and turned out to be a very special one. In fact, this coffee joint is the main element that allows me to call my Downtown San Rafael errandathons my San Rafael fun days. Near the historic mission nests a quiet woody happening coffee joint with some neat merchandise to look at. The staff is quite nice. Back to my original outing plan: following a bike drop-off at Mike’s Bikes for repair, the plan was first to do a walk-in bank consultation, then pick up some bread at Bordenave’s. However, my rather dumb self-drag here put a cup of coffee in my hands. So, I had to go to the more distant Bordenave’s first to finish the coffee before going to the bank which turned out to be a 20-minute wait before a 15-minute consultation. The small oat milk latte was an expensive $7.25 on my MasterCard. The make-happen event that the must-drink-up coffee resulted in me being able to get THE LAST Dark Rye at Bordenave’s was PRICELESS. On another trip, I had a blueberry coffee cake with my oat milk latte: the certainly could have used more blueberries. As for biking, there is a really cool “lockstand” right outside the window. As the distinct Bordenave’s bakery is the most legit reason to go to Downtown San Rafael, Pink Owl is the most chill yet fun. It’s where the Downtown Spirit is. It is the main place I think of when I arrive home following such a beautiful soaring ridge top bike ride and celebrate by playing Petula Clark’s “Downtown.” In addition, this probably has become my favorite Marin...

I used to support Pink Owl despite the fact their coffee is mediocre at best. I recently was involved in serving them with legal documents from my cousin’s girlfriend’s small bagel business who they not only ripped off for $1,000 but who they continuously misled, lied to and deceived to avoid payment. Prior to this I had attempted to address the matter with one of the owners (Saandra Bowlus) who told me there were probably many merchants they were behind with and they were doing their best to catch up. The matter was never taken care and even when I handed one of the owners (Joe Carlo) the small claims paperwork he insisted I had the wrong business. If these people are going around ripping off young women’s small businesses, I guarantee they are not upholding their claims of supporting breast cancer with donations from their profits. They are liars and frankly do not deserve your support when there is far better coffee around. We plan to picket and warn any to-be customers to go elsewhere until...