Stereoscope

The room took the Cafe category at the 2021 Restaurant & Bar Design Awards, which usually means the coffee is the second-best thing in the building. Here it is a close call: a white Poursteady makes the pour-overs one cup at a time, off coffee the company roasts on its own Probat P12.

• A single-origin pour-over
• The underwater ceiling mural
• A kitchen lunch before 3pm
• A patio seat near the Back Bay Loop Trail
• Beans to take home

Roasting is brand-wide on a Probat P12 in a 2,500-square-foot Arts District warehouse, under a founding team of baristas and Q-graders that includes co-founder Leif An, himself Q-grader certified. The shared web store lists eight coffees named to the farm or washing station — down to Ethiopia Bishan Wate's washing station, Guji region and Heirloom varietal — though no product page prints a roast date, only a freshest-available-roast shipping promise.

David Wick of Wick Architecture and Andrew Lindley of LAND Design Studio built these 780 square feet around a commissioned Christy Lee Rogers underwater photograph, printed across the ceiling and fading to white eight feet up the walls, over blue-tone marble, bone-hued tile and rows of Astro Globe lights. Leif An put the picture that high on purpose so regulars would not tire of it, which is a longer view than most build-outs bother to take.