Chestnut Hill Coffee Company Review: Have Another Cup

The best coffee shops aren’t necessarily those with the best coffee (though we found that, too). They’re those coffee shops that perfectly fit your craving. Whether you’re searching for a connoisseur’s espresso or a taste-of-childhood hot chocolate, an elegant sip of afternoon tea or a crazy caffeinated concoction, a Starbucks alternative or just a place to settle in with your laptop, we’ve got a spot for you.

The Coffee Shop

In the quirky suburb-within-a-city where energetic young families live in quaint stone houses, you’ll find Chestnut Hill Coffee Company. It’s bright and modern, with vaguely uncomfortable curvy black furniture and a garnet wall. A steady flow of stroller-ed moms, Mac-toting students and post-yoga middle-agers ebbs and flows.

They have one thing in common: They all crave that first utopian gulp of the small-batch, house-roasted, flawlessly brewed coffee and espresso that the hip baristas here pull. Which is exactly what owner Sultan Malikyar was hoping for. He caught the caffeine bug while living in Seattle, and upon relocating brought Northwest-style coffee to the Northwest corner of our city. (He also brought good friend and master roaster John Hornall, who minds the beans.) The duo is obsessed with every aspect of coffee — they compare it to wine, they talk about brightness and finishes, they analyze varietals and farms, and they are die-hard devotees of proper technique. The result is a coffee so distinctive — strong, yet light and ideally balanced — that this random shop makes total sense. — A.P.

8620 Germantown Avenue, 215-242-8600.

The Hot Chocolate Shop

Call this an alternative coffee shop, though it has none of the tattoo ink and hair dye the term has come to imply. It’s the menu at bright, polished Naked Chocolate Caf that veers from the expected. There’s coffee — from Small World Roasters, a dark fair-trade bean — in all its mocha-latte-cappuccino forms. But it’s not unusual to see a couple come in with one half bearing a Starbucks brew in hand. The other is here for hot chocolate that, for once, isn’t an afterthought. Philly’s hot-chocolate drinkers have never been faced with so many choices: classic (a blend of milk and dark chocolate that veers toward dessert); bittersweet; warm-spice-scented Aztec; and more sharply spiced and aptly named Spicy, each served in a thicker European style or a smoother American.

If you get your chocolate fix to go, you’ll miss the frills — frills you’ve paid for, at $5 for a six-ounce cup of the hot stuff, in an Irish coffee mug balanced on a cocoa-dusted saucer, with a messy mound of whipped cream stabbed through with a crisp, buttery tuile. Kiddie cupcakes, dense and flavorful beneath buttercream icing with all the nuance of candy corn, and the nudo, a lopsided pyramid with a crisp, almost cookie base and a brownie-like peak, get equal attention, served on miniature white plates with dainty forks. And when the warm weather returns, Naked Chocolate continues to serve the alternative crowd, forgoing the usual iced tea for excellent lemonades, like the floral apple version and the more-fire-than-ice ginger-lemon combo. — A.W.

1317 Walnut Street, 215-735-7310, nakedchocolatecafe.com.