Eat This Now: Local Coffee Roasts

AS STARBUCKS MARCHES through the world (more than 10,500 stores in 37 countries — and more than 140 in the Philly region), local javaphiles continue to play David to its Goliath. Roasters La Colombe, Old City Coffee and Montgomery County’s Fonseca have long jockeyed for their shares of the $19 billion U.S. coffee industry, and there’s more competition brewing. Kimberton Coffee, near Phoenixville, is a large, recent start-up, with roasts — including the incredibly dark Smoke Stack — available at dozens of area markets. The more meek might opt for the smoother Kimberton Rhoades or the Majolica blend, named for the Phoenixville restaurant where it’s served. Collegeville’s Cohveca, a smaller operation, pairs a former barista from Chicago with a Jamaican immigrant who owns a 12-acre Jamaican Blue Mountain farm back home. Their chicory blend has supplanted New Orleans’s famed French Market brand at Carmine’s Creole Cafe in Narberth (available at cohvecacoffee.com).