The Grind: Comet Coffee

Comet Coffee is small on purpose. That is the whole argument, and after sixteen years in Nickels Arcade, it remains a compelling one.

The shop opened in 2009 when Jim Saborio, an Ann Arbor native, took over a sliver of space in the covered pedestrian passage between State Street and Maynard.^{1The 2009 opening date and Jim Saborio's background as an Ann Arbor native are per Michigan Daily reporting on Comet Coffee's founding.} The menu has never been the point. The room has never been mistaken for comfortable. What Comet has done, consistently and without apparent interest in expanding, is pull some of the most carefully executed espresso drinks in this city, sourced from roasters selected for how they treat their farmers, rotated often enough that the same bean rarely appears on consecutive visits. That discipline is a specific philosophy, and the cortado is its proof.

The Drink

The cortado is the order. Equal parts espresso and steamed milk, served in a small glass, temperature correct, espresso flavor distinct through the milk. It is a drink that hides nothing. A cortado made with weak extraction tastes flat. Milk steamed poorly registers as foam or as water. At Comet, neither happens. The espresso is clean and bright, and the milk integration is tight enough that you can taste what the roaster was working toward.

This matters more than it sounds because Comet's sourcing approach guarantees variety. The shop pulls from roasters including 49th Parallel (Burnaby, British Columbia), George Howell (Massachusetts), Brandywine Coffee Roasters (Delaware), and Ritual Coffee (San Francisco), among others, rotating through whatever aligns with Saborio's current read on quality and fair-trade commitment.^{2Comet Coffee's rotating sourcing approach and fair-trade criteria for roaster selection are per multiple reviews and the shop's own publicly stated sourcing philosophy.} The result is that a cortado from Comet in March tastes different from a cortado in October, but the craft of the preparation does not change. The shop is not a conduit for one roaster's vision. It is a consistent execution framework applied to whatever it is sourcing at the moment.

A macchiato works just as well. Drip, when available, is extracted clean. Iced drinks are not an afterthought. What Comet does not serve is the twenty-ounce flavored latte that most coffee shops depend on for ticket volume. The menu is short, and the constraint is intentional. If you want that drink, there are better places to get it a few blocks away. If you want the best espresso preparation in downtown Ann Arbor, this is the address.

Drinks run $4 to $6. That is an honest price for what you get.

The Room

"Room" is generous by a margin. Comet occupies a narrow section of Nickels Arcade, with a counter along one wall and a few stools on the other. When the line forms on a weekday morning, it spills into the passage itself, past the arched storefronts and the red-tile floor that dates to 1918.^{3Nickels Arcade's construction date and the red-tile floor are per the Ann Arbor Historic District Commission and Wikipedia's entry on Nickels Arcade.} Total capacity at any moment rarely exceeds a dozen people. Half of those are waiting for to-go orders.

The smallness is not a flaw the shop is working around. It is the filter. People who need a table, Wi-Fi, and an hour of uninterrupted work will find somewhere else. Comet retains the customers who came specifically for what is in the cup, and the room's scale ensures that the cup is the only thing competing for attention. The barista and the customer are in each other's space by default. Every drink is made with an audience. That kind of proximity either makes the barista self-conscious or keeps the barista focused. At Comet, it produces the latter.

Nickels Arcade does a lot of work here. The covered passage connecting State and Maynard is a Beaux-Arts commercial arcade built in 1918, one of the last free-standing structures of its type in Michigan, with a gable skylight of metal-framed glass panels and arched terra cotta details that have nothing to do with modern retail.^{4The architectural description of Nickels Arcade as a Beaux-Arts commercial arcade with a metal-framed gable skylight and terra cotta details is per the National Register of Historic Places listing and Ann Arbor District Library records.} Comet did not build that atmosphere. Comet occupies it, and the fit is exact. A cortado in Nickels Arcade, in a space this idiosyncratic, in a city this size, feels like a discovery even when you have been there twenty times.

The Program

Comet does not roast. That is the most clarifying thing you can say about what Saborio is doing, because every other serious coffee program in Ann Arbor has organized itself around in-house roasting or around one roaster's identity. RoosRoast is John Roos's roasts, twenty years deep. Espy serves beans roasted at Anthology Coffee in Detroit. Comet goes the other direction: it selects from the best roasters available and applies consistent craft to whatever it is sourcing.

This is a legitimate philosophy, and not a fallback position. The sourcing criteria are specific: roasters who have tied their own success to fair treatment of the farmers supplying their beans.^{2Comet Coffee's rotating sourcing approach and fair-trade criteria for roaster selection are per multiple reviews and the shop's own publicly stated sourcing philosophy.} The rotation keeps the program honest, because no single origin or roaster can become an excuse. If the current lot is not working as espresso, the next rotation will show it.

What Comet is not doing: chasing the vocabulary of specialty coffee. The menu is not annotated with processing methods, altitude ranges, or flavor wheel references. The cup is made well or it is not, and the results are the argument. Travel + Leisure included Comet in a list of America's coolest coffeehouses, in part for the Japanese pour-over technique and the focused, uncomplicated approach to the menu.^{5The Travel + Leisure "America's Coolest Coffeehouses" recognition is per the Ann Arbor News business review of Comet Coffee, which cited the pour-over technique and the Nickels Arcade location as factors.} The New York Times included it in a "36 Hours in Ann Arbor" piece.^{6The New York Times "36 Hours in Ann Arbor" mention is per the Ann Arbor News business review reporting on national media coverage of Comet Coffee.} Neither recognition appears on the wall at Nickels Arcade.

Where It Ranks

Three entries in, the list looks like this:

1. RoosRoast -- the city's roaster; the benchmark; a loyalty built over twenty years that the Lobster Butter Love sustains on its own
2. Comet Coffee -- the best cortado in Ann Arbor; the most precise espresso program in the city; the room is a constraint that functions as an asset
3. Espy Cafe -- the highest ceiling; sourcing from Anthology Coffee in Detroit with genuine early promise; the ranking will move when the program matures

Comet lands at two. Not three. Here is the argument.

Espy opened in March. The beans are roasted at Anthology Coffee in Detroit and served on two Decent DE1XXL espresso machines. That transparency and the quality of the early cups are real. The series will revisit the ranking after Espy has more time to prove what it can do. But precision built over sixteen years is a different kind of claim than precision demonstrated over two months, and at this point in the ranking, Comet's track record earns the position.

What would move Comet above RoosRoast? A single-origin espresso program with enough range and depth to challenge the Lobster Butter Love's following across roast profiles. Comet could theoretically get there through sourcing alone. It has not done it yet, and RoosRoast's identity is so thoroughly embedded in how Ann Arbor thinks about coffee that closing that gap would take time even if the cups were better.

Comet is two. It has been among the top two for long enough that the ranking is not a surprise. It is a confirmation.

Comet Coffee is at 16 Nickels Arcade, Ann Arbor. Open Mon-Fri 7:30 a.m.-6:30 p.m., Sat 8 a.m.-6:30 p.m., Sun 8:30 a.m.-6:30 p.m.

This is Entry 3 of The Grind: Best Coffee in Ann Arbor, an ongoing series.