Cafes Melange Market Mission Reveille Coffee Castro | Tasting Table San Francisco

Put down your cell phone. Exchange your laptop for a pile of napkins. The food at these two new cafés is just too good.

Matt Semmelheck and the AQ-TBD team have just taken over the window-clad café in the Mission's ODC Theater, renaming it Mélange Market and decorating the space with old picnic tables and strings of vintage eggbeaters.

Former AQ pastry chef Maya Erickson is baking pastries. There's nothing particularly French about the "French muffin" ($4) a nutmeg-spiced baked cake doughnut coated thickly in cinnamon sugar, but it's a natural pair with a De La Paz cappuccino ($3.25).

Mélange's sandwich board changes daily, but always has something worth ordering: Get a salad of pink-flecked chicories with beets ($7), say, or a sandwich of sweet roasted butternut-squash steaks, goat cheese, pesto and kale ($9) on lacy-crumbed bread.

The grilled ham and cheese at Réveille Coffee Company
Réveille Coffee Company opened a Castro branch two weeks ago, and owners Tommy and Chris Newbury gave a formerly dim, low-ceiling space an Op-Art makeover.

Réveille's coffee has always been correct, whether your standards are measured by pour-over or espresso drinks. Pair your Americano ($3) with a housemade biscuit slathered with Inna Jam preserves or, if you've arrived after the end of breakfast service (11:30 a.m.), opt for the grilled Fra'mani ham and cheese sandwich topped with braised leeks and spinach and accompanied by a sprightly arugula salad ($10).

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