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Inside the always-busy SOMA Whole Foods, under a large sign for "Allegro Handcrafted Coffee," you'll find a small café towards the northwest corner of this large grocery market. There are several tables and counter-and-stool seating along the 4th St. windows for your snacking and coffee-sipping pleasure, which is regularly interrupted by price checks over the grocery store PA system. There's something unsettling about Whole Foods: for all their emphasis on all-natural and organic ingredients, including their coffee, the place always feels as sterile as the clean room at a chemical plant (not to mention their unblemished, perfectly symmetrical food). Their relatively unskilled baristas use a single group Franke superautomatic machine to produce an espresso with a minimalist film of a pale, large-bubbled crema. Yet surprisingly, the cup has a nice flavor that suggests bakers chocolate and some cedar.
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