Some places have such big personalities that they almost seem alive. Take, for instance, stories such as Alice in Wonderland or Howl’s Moving Castle with settings so colorful that they become their own character. On rare occasions, you may find a location like those in real life. San Jose’s K-Café is absolutely one of them.

Good Friends and Good Brews The Midtown Arts Mercantile on Lincoln Avenue houses some of the city’s most innovative and creative businesses, while connecting…

Spend an hour talking about whiskey with Virag Saksena, and it will feel like you’ve taken a master class on the subject. A longtime fan of the versatile spirit, Saksena is the cofounder—along with Vishal Gauri —of the 10th Street Distillery, one of San Jose’s first hard alcohol producers since prohibition.

With how well they get along, you’d have no idea that Be’Anka Ashaolu and Jeronica Macey were sisters, let alone flourishing business partners. Together, they built Nirvana Soul.

Benvenuti! Welcome to Enoteca La Storia, an Italian wine bar run by Mike Guerra and Joe Cannistraci. The combination of the word “enoteca” (or “wine library” in English) with “la storia” (“story”) is as thoughtfully paired as the pasta is with the pinot noir.

You just know when you meet people and you like them and you get along with them, you’re just going to be surrounded by…

In the restaurant business, success is born from something even simpler than good food and drink: people’s propensity to connect with one another. Kathy and Tone Tran know a bit about this social connection, and it’s allowed them to remain successfully in this business for over ten years.

Here it is not just family-owned, it is family-operated, right down to Adolfo Gomez himself greeting you at the door.

What’s old is new again at the Orchestria Palm Court, a gem of a restaurant in San Jose’s theatre district.

There’s a reason so many of us have such positive associations with coffee. Sure, it tastes great—but it’s not as if that flavor surpasses everything else you’ve ever passed over your taste buds. So what then? “It’s not so much about the coffee,” Bryan Chiem reveals. “It’s about coffee being the glue that brings people together.” He elaborates: “We can sit in a lab all day and talk about how it tastes or the science behind the coffee, but if we have no one to share it with then it means nothing.”

Picking the perfect spot to grab a cold beer can be a formidable task. With so many breweries and restaurants with full beer menus in San Jose, the choices are endless. But if you’ve ever felt the options on tap were a bit underwhelming, Clandestine Brewing offers artisanal, small-batch brews to suit even the most adventurous palate. Originally tucked away in the Monterey Avenue manufacturing area—as the secrecy in their name suggests—this co-op of homebrewers is now serving in the SoFA District of San Jose. Rob Conticello, one of the co-owners, shares the brewery’s journey.

Frank Nguyen has been on a journey for several years, moving toward opening his own crafted coffee house. From building out the space on South Second and Williams to running a pop-up from Five Points on West Santa Clara Street, Nguyen is looking to share his special coffee and select pastries with the community—and to help others to brew that perfect cup. [Editor’s Note: Location on South Second Street opened August 2017.]

It’s easy to take for granted how effortless it is to get a cup of coffee. Anywhere you travel, you won’t have to search far before smelling the rich aroma coming from somewhere nearby. But finding a brew that not only tastes good, but that has been ethically sourced from the seed to the cup, is harder to do. For Tyler Pinckard, self-proclaimed coffee lover and CEO of Coffee Shift, Inc., his company’s focus is to disrupt the traditional coffee market to give more back to the farmers and provide better-tasting coffee for the consumer.

The dog days of summer have surrendered to a season of renewal along California’s central coast, and Pedro Tortoledo is cultivating a field the way he worked his 20-acre farm a quarter century ago...

The team at Humble Sea Brewery, including the co-founders—Nick Pavlina, Taylor West, and Frank Scott Krueger—have brought to life a brewery that is filled with energy, creativity, and, of course, delicious beer...

Big beer, meatballs, mashed potatoes. It’s exactly what I’d love to eat at home.—Ben Bate German-English duo brings a taste of Europe to San…

From pasture, barn, and seed to table It’s a 20-minute drive from downtown San Jose to the Mount Hamilton GrandView Restaurant. From the terrace…

In December 2015, Carlos and Fernanda Carreira opened Adega—Portuguese for “wine cellar”—on Alum Rock Avenue in East San Jose’s historic Little Portugal. They inherited and retooled the 33-year old legacy of the former Portuguese restaurant, Sousa’s.