Comments (0) Best Coffeehouse - 2010

Pasion del Cielo

If you ever find yourself half-naked in a Coral Gables condo at 10 p.m., grinding your teeth and picking your scabs, you have a problem. You need caffeine and you need it badly. But there's a bigger problem. Your usual supplier, Starbucks, has already closed for the night. Ditto for Barnes & Noble. Even your supersecret, emergency espresso supply has been consumed. Now, where in hell are you gonna get some high-grade java in this neighborhood at this time of night? Hit Pasión del Cielo. Open from 7 a.m. to 11 p.m. every day of the week, Pasión has beans from almost every Latin American producer: Brazil, Colombia, Costa Rica, Cuba, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico, Nicaragua, and Peru. And like you, this place is dangerously crazy for coffee. Every single dose is custom-ground, using dedicated grinders for each country's coffee in order to, in the words of the store's corporate pamphlet, "prevent flavor contamination and to electronically dose the exact amount and coarseness level." Plus Pasión's menu offers fixes of almost every kind, including $1.55 espresso shots, $1.75 coladas, and $2.60 large coffees. There's even a ton of soft-core stuff such as peach-strawberry sparkles, chai tea lattés, and mocha-chip frappés. The craziest part, though: Anytime between 11 a.m. and 6 p.m., this coffeehouse delivers hot black stuff directly to the doors of teeth-grinding, scab-picking, condo-dwelling java junkies all over Coral Gables.