La Colombe

Thanks to the Starbucks onslaught, everyone's drinking lattés, cappuccinos, skinny iced decafs, and occasionally a mocha frappuccino (whatever that is). But the perfectly balanced macchiato hooked up by buoyant barrista Doug Wolfe at La Colombe is the surest path to coffee heaven. Wolfe, who seems to know the quirky orders of two-thirds of the thousands of customers who pass through the shop, pulls a single one-and-a-half-ounce espresso and tops it off with just a dollop of foamed milk, producing a shot of pure coffee flavor possessing appropriately great body. And once he learns your order, your macchiato will be waiting on the bar by the time you reach the front of the line.