Mandarin Coffee Stand

Sherry Gao came off three years at Intelligentsia and built a 400-square-foot standing bar on the Japanese model, where you take the cup at the counter and talk to whoever made it. Nothing is roasted here; the program runs on Rabbit Hole Roasters out of Quebec, Roast Magazine's 2023 Micro Roaster of the Year, and centers on coffee from China's Yunnan region.

• A quick stand-up espresso
• The Yunnan pour-over
• Bagged beans to take home
• A pastry between errands on South Lake

The house blend pairs Guatemalan and Ethiopian beans roasted by Rabbit Hole Roasters in Quebec, Roast Magazine's 2023 Micro Roaster of the Year, with rotating pours from Germany's The Barn and Denmark's La Cabra. The program centers specifically on coffee from China's Yunnan region, brewed as espresso, batch drip and pour-over, with retail bags labeled to farm and washing station running $2 to $3 over house varieties.

The stand sits inside the Burlington Arcade, a covered retail corridor on South Lake Avenue built to mirror its London namesake, with a brass-topped counter and walnut shelving on brass brackets holding the retail bags. Seating is genuinely tight, a few stools plus the breezeway, in a room that came together over a seven-month buildout inside the arcade's existing shell.