Caffe Trieste

Caffe Trieste is marked by a hand-painted sign and a hanging wooden board at its exterior corner, which identify the establishment at six hundred one Vallejo Street. Opened in nineteen fifty-six by Giovanni Giotta—an immigrant from Rovigno D'Istria—it became the first coffeehouse on the West Coast to serve espresso. Giotta, known to regulars as Papa Gianni, brought his own roasting techniques to the neighborhood, replacing the instant coffee common in American homes at the time with a tradition rooted in the cafes of his home city of Trieste.