Metric Coffee
West Town · 2021 W Fulton St, Chicago, IL 60612
What stood out: A Current, Venue-Level Global Ranking — Scored at Its Floor
Where we have evaluated coffee
Pick your city. If it is not here, tell us where you are below and we will point you at the closest we have covered.
Chicago: 8 independent coffee shops were screened for the 2026 award, and 3 are named here. We do not publish assessments of the shops we did not recognise.
Four Letter Word Coffee — Logan Square
3022 W Diversey Ave, Chicago, IL 60647
Recognised as the most broadly corroborated café in the field — named independently by national specialty trade press, city press and a city tourism guide — a roaster “devoted to roasting beautiful coffees”, in its own words, founded by Eylem Ozkaya, Kevin Heisner and Ria Neri, and serving its Logan Square café at 3022 W Diversey every day.
Kusanya Cafe
825 W 69th St, Chicago, IL 60621
Recognised for thirteen years of nonprofit coffee in Englewood — founded in 2013 by Phil Sipka, roasting its beans on-site at 825 W 69th Street, with community programming from open-mic nights to yoga, and the most accessible price in the field: Eater Chicago’s 2026 guide records that “a cup of coffee is just $1.60”.
How this works
We evaluate independent specialty coffee shops on six documented coffee dimensions — how the coffee is sourced, roasted and made. No food criteria, no chains, and no shop pays to be here. In each city we screen the independent field, name one winner and publish why it won, and recognise a small number of honorable mentions for what each of them does well.
We do not publish an assessment of a coffee shop we did not recognise. Naming a business and characterising it in a judgement it never asked for is not something we will do, so the rest of each field stays out of public view. We say how many shops were screened, because that describes our method rather than any business.
This page holds no locations and measures no distances. It answers by city, by state and by region, from the awards we have published — so when we recognise coffee in another city, it appears here.
Which cities has CoffeeLabAdvisor evaluated coffee shops in?
We have evaluated specialty coffee in 19 US cities across 17 states: Albuquerque, Boston, Chattanooga, Chicago, Columbus, Denver, Fayetteville, Grand Rapids, Greenville, Indianapolis, Kansas City, Louisville, Minneapolis, Nashville, Newark, Olympia, Omaha, St. Louis and Tulsa.
Does this find coffee shops near my exact location?
No. We do not ask for your location and we do not calculate distances. You tell us where you are and we show what we have evaluated in that city, or in that state, or in that region. Every city we cover is listed on the page, so you can see straight away whether yours is one of them.
What does an Honorable Mention mean?
It is positive recognition of a coffee shop on its own terms, alongside the city’s winner. We publish what each one was recognised for. We do not publish assessments of shops that were screened and not recognised.
Do you rank the coffee shops?
We name one winner per city and its honorable mentions, and we publish why the winner won. We do not publish a ranked list or a score for coffee shops.
All city coffee guides · The CoffeeLab Awards · How we evaluate