Coffee Week 2026: Renaud's Patisserie

Renaud’s Patisserie: Drip Coffee & Croissant ($5); Drip Coffee & Croissant BLT ($10) 

Be honest — so often, a BLT promises way more than it delivers. Flimsy bread, soggy lettuce, limp tomatoes, a surfeit of bacon strips, so 50 percent of your bites are sadly pork-less.

Now meet the BLT of your dreams. It starts with Renaud’s well-renowned croissants, the area’s best since the first of Renaud Gonthier’s spots opened back in 2008 in Loreto Plaza. There’s a rich aioli and not some dull mayo. Poor lettuce, so often a sandwich’s lackluster wallflower, here dances up a crisp, crunchy storm of bright green. The tomatoes have flavor. And then not just bacon, but also thinly sliced ham, lightly grilled for more richness and ancillary pork crunch. There’s red onion for those unafraid to partake of the pungent lily. You will make a happy, delicious, finger-licking mess.

Or go classic and order “only” a croissant, a celebration of lamination, baked butter, and fragile flake.

And either eats gets washed down with Peerless Drip Coffee, from one of the country’s premier roasters for more than a century. You can even choose from Hawaiian, French, or Guatemalan roasts, depending on how much bite you’d like.

Don’t be surprised if you also leave with a gorgeous chocolate Easter bunny for the kids. (Sure, for the kids.)

If you want to read about all the other Coffee Week deals, then do so at the Independent's site.

Salvatore Espresso’s Grand Coffee Machines

The year 1992 proved quite the moment for modern coffee. A modest company called Starbucks launched its IPO with a mere 140 coffee shops — today, it has 214 times (!) more outlets, not counting the dozens that opened as I wrote this article.

More critically for folks in search of a good cup, 1992 was the year that Salvatore Cisaria’s “brain started to roll and roll and roll, and I decided to do this.” “This” is making some of the most beautiful, completely handcrafted espresso machines in the world, which he’s been doing ever since, from Haley Street to the Santa Ynez Valley.

Want to read the rest then do so at the Independent's site.

At Least from Behind You Can't Tell If It's a Grande or a Venti

Tell me this isn't a new trend, but a couple of weeks ago, when getting coffee at one of the spots one can do so on the UCSB campus, the barista, who I realize is actually a college student probably not majoring in Caffeine Delivery, was doing that youthful thing and wearing his shorts so they exposed most of his shorts. Now, beyond not even understanding the physics of such fashion-downward design, as it were--how do the pants stay up when they're halfway off?--who thinks it's a good idea to make consumable things for people and flash them most of your boxers at the same time? I mean, he's a college student--is that even sanitary? 

Sorry, just had to get that off my chest, but I promise I'm staying fully dressed while doing so.