SUNROOF COFFEE (175 Tracy St., @sunroofcoffeeath): Lo, as promised so many years ago, when the Chase Park warehouses were first developed into a mixed-use complex with artist space, businesses and lofts, the area is finally flowering, with numerous new buildings and businesses rising from the ground. The new Mill District apartments are among them, already thickly populated. Tucked between the apartment buildings are a series of kiosks available for rent to small businesses, including a permanent jewelry store and a frosé shop with a bulldog theme. Among these is Sunroof Coffee, an adorable micro-business founded by two BFFs with stars in their eyes and a dream.
Business is walk-up style, to a window in the kiosk, and apart from a few umbrellaed tables with chairs, there is little in the way of cover, but orders are ready speedily, and surliness is nonexistent. Sunroof brews Firelight coffee, roasted by a small company out of Atlanta focused on sustainable practices. It has about the usual range of coffee and coffee-adjacent beverages: espresso, Americano, flat white, latte, cortado, plus batch-brewed regular old coffee and iced coffee, a few teas (hot loose leaf, matcha and chai lattes) and hot chocolate. Also, affogato, a matcha version of the same, Topo Chico if you need to hydrate and some specials. I tried a Canadian Shaken (iced espresso shaken with your choice of milk, maple lavender syrup, apple cider, nutmeg and allspice), which was a little much like a mouthful of potpourri for my taste, but I have been drinking my coffee black with no sugar since middle school, which might just mean such things are not for me. The plain iced coffee was better, although not outstanding. If you want more sustenance, you might get lucky with a scone from Sweetie Pie by Savvy, or you might have to move along and get your solid calories elsewhere.
The space encourages dipping in and out more than it does lingering, but it’s nice to see a baby business making a go of it. Sunroof Coffee is open 7 a.m.–4 p.m. weekdays and 8 a.m.–4 p.m. Saturdays, closed Sundays.
INDEPENDENT BAKING CO. (1625 S. Lumpkin St., 706-850-3550): When Kevin Scollo bought this fantastic bakery from its founder, Thom Leonard, the question was how much things would change. The answer has mostly been “not much,” which is good. Don’t tinker excessively with a good thing lest you break it. The bread is still reliably excellent; the viennoiserie too. But hearing that there were more sandwiches sort of gave me a turn. Really? Independent’s bread makes for a great sandwich, but the store actually selling its own seemed like a bridge too far. Only it turns out that they’re delicious.
Independent so far makes two kinds of sandwiches, much in the same way Buvez has done for a long time, using Independent’s bread. Prepared on baguettes, they are wrapped in paper and in the upper case by 11 a.m. When they’re gone, they’re gone. No customizing. Ten dollars each. The first one is a classic jambon beurre, the most popular sandwich in France, with thinly sliced ham, house cultured butter and (unusually) whole-grain mustard. That mustard has a tang that plays off the leavening in the bread and makes the creaminess of the butter even more beautiful. The second sandwich combines arugula, Brie and a fig mostarda. Once again, we have sharpness from the arugula and the mustard oil on the mostarda that somehow doesn’t dominate but elevates the creaminess of the other ingredient, a lovely brie that doesn’t have the chemical tang of a lot of inferior products. I might feel that these sandwiches are mission creep, and I might not support their presence in the abstract, but as far as the concrete real world goes, they are damn good.
There’s other stuff being added too: a focaccia topped with veggies from the farmers market that I was not that impressed with (muddy flavors, not enough salt), financiers with pistachio rather than almond (little rectangular cake-cookie hybrids along the lines of madeleines, with a thin crust on the outside and a soft, cakey interior, flavored with brown butter and delicately leavened), sweet little palmiers, and an array of cookies. It’s nice to see experimentation, but sometimes it’s getting a bit crowded in the case. On the other hand, purity is an impossible goal to maintain, and maybe it’s not even worth it. The bakery remains very, very good, including the sandwiches.
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