Rainbow Bean Coffee & Ice Cream

I stopped in here on the recommendation of a friend…
The coffee was really, really good (also: not expensive…$ 1 for a house cup). The ice cream was also good… so says my daughter who laid waste to a cone in record time.
It’s a family-​owned place and it shows. Nothing touristy nor corporate about the place.
Cambria has quite a few casual dining and coffee house options… there’s no pretense here, just good food, good drink, and good prices.
I’ll be back!
BTW– This place is under new ownership and is now called the Village Bean… you may notice this review posted there, too. Either name: this place is a great choice!

Love this place… although now known as the village bean… best coffee ever… and the staff is the best ever!!!

Love love the town and awesome coffee and baked goods in this unassuming coffee house.

This is a nice little place in the south part of Cambria. There is new ownership as of a couple of weeks ago, and they are very nice people. They are expanding the number of items and improving the quality. They have one case of ice cream and some pastries. I didn’t try their coffee. Their ice cream is good, and they are open to suggestions. I will try it again in a few weeks and update, but for now, I would recommend this place for an after dinner dessert.

We tried to go here for ice cream three times, but they were always closed! (They are not open until 8 pm, as it says on here.) Of course, they were open at 8:00 am… when no one wanted ice cream! Wish I could speak to their quality, but their schedule never aligned with ours.

Wonderful service great coffee. Fantastic carrot cake. We went in for the free coffee offered from 12:00 to 12:30 p.m. and found this wonderful carrot cake and loved it. I small little coffee house with friendly service and employees.

Free Wi-​Fi and the best carrot muffins! My husband and I stopped in on our way to Hearst Castle. The carrot muffins were so good that we ordered ½ dozen to take back on our road trip… the blueberry muffins were good too!

I think this is the best bean in the lil Cambrea scene.

This place is a worthy stop if you’re in Cambria or, like me and my boyfriend, heading up the 101. Pretty darned good ice cream. Not quite amazing. I must say, though, I love the ambience of the small town atmosphere. We ate our ice cream as we walked through Main Street.
This is one of a bagillion reviews that I am posting from my San Francisco Birthday 2010 Trip. Check ‘em out!

At the end of the rainbow instead of a pot of gold you find a giant waffle cone with black cherry and moosetrack ice cream!
Yummm. I can’t say the ice cream was that impressive but ice cream on a nice day is always a good idea. They had a good variety of about a dozen or so flavors. They had the usual cookie dough, rocky road, strawberry, etc. Nothing too crazy.
If you are cruising along Main St. in Cambria and want a snack Rainbow isn’t a bad choice.

Good, Big Sur blend coffee, lots of locals, ice cream for those who like to indulge, and a clear sense of place: Rainbow Bean is a nice stopping point for those who find themselves wandering the Main Street of Cambria. This is not a touristy spot, just a well-​run place where you can relax with friends or family over a steaming cup of nicely-​roasted coffee, a sweet snack, or a Mighty Leaf tea. Bring your own cup to really fill out the experience and a book or newspaper to read.

I guess I’d prefer to be addicted to caffeine rather than, say, crack? Heroin? Meth?
But still, addiction is addiction, and withdrawal sucks.
I could feel my body slowly shutting down as the day wore on. We had camp-​coffee that morning, which meant 20+ year old instant Nescafe that came out of the supply basket in my dad’s old camper. No joke, I think that stuff expired back when I was in the 8^th grade.
You’d dip your spoon into the bottle, and it would slide into what was once powdered coffee and is now a gelatinous mass. Slurp a spoonful, spin your spoon over, and it defied gravity and stuck. Stir it into your hot water, and you could hear the water screaming for mercy. Pull the spoon out and find that it was half melted away. The spoon I mean. I’ve heard of drinking coffee ‘black,’ but that stuff was like a total absence of light. I was afraid the galaxy was going to get sucked into the vortex of my coffee cup.
No amount of sugar or powdered creamer was making that stuff taste good. Especially since the powdered creamer was equally as old as the instant coffee. I tore open the packet and found a chunk of creamer the consistency and shape of a small bar of soap, like that found in a cheap motel. Probably tasted like soap too.
Afraid I would disintegrate my tongue and be left with a hole in the bottom of my mouth from drinking this stuff, I passed. I figured the rest of the world must finally be like Seattle, where you can’t pee without splashing a local coffee shop.
I was wrong. Though I did later find the Morro Bay Coffee Company (
), I was severely decaffeinated for most of the day. And, unlike Seattle, which was still in a gloomy June-​uary, it was hot and sunny, which can really shock the system of a Seattlite… ‘what is this Vitamin D you speak of?!’ And I had just finished driving from Seattle to So-​Cal, sleeping in my car, on the floor of my aunt’s house in Santa Cruz, and in a tent, respectively, for the previous three nights.
Suffice to say, by the time we got to Cambria that afternoon, even though it had been over 28 years since I had been there, I could smell my way to Rainbow Bean (no big surprise, take a look at my nose sometime. I can smell the future!).
My kingdom for a cup of coffee! And theirs wasn’t bad at all. Of course, at this point, beggars can’t be choosers, but seriously, it was nice to have a cup of coffee where you weren’t worried about single handedly destroying the universe with a cup of java anti-​matter.
I returned about a half hour later to grab an ice cream cone with my older brother. They had bubblegum and rainbow sherbet, and I remember when I was young and naïve and chose those flavors. HA! No longer. They got chocolate? I eat chocolate. I passed up the Rocky Road, knowing we were having S’Mores that evening, and I’d get my fill of marshmallows then.
The ice cream was tasty, and perfect on a hot, summery afternoon. My brain sufficiently caffeinated, my belly full of cool ice cream, and my mouth left with the yummy taste of chocolate, I was able to carry on, my wayward sons, and get to re-​exploring and rediscovering the rest of this neat little town I hadn’t seen in so many years.

I did my caffeinating at Rainbow the past couple of days. Good bean juice, friendly service.
I’m not sure if it’s the best coffee in town, but there weren’t nothing wrong with it. And the price was right!

Fruit Smoothie… fresh strawberries, blueberries, a peeled banana, a splash of OJ, maybe some ice, and you have a delicious meal that is totally healthy and satisfies your early morning hunger… not to mention your recommended servings of fruit for the day. Welp, maybe you can find a Jamba Juice in the next town.
The smoothie I ordered had a silly name and listed the ingredients below: mango, orange, pineapple and some other fruits in it. I am admiring the adorable main street of Cambria, just chillin, waiting for my smoothie and my friend’s coffee.
I was shocked to see the dude put 5 scoops of orange/​pineapple sherbert in the blender, some fruit juice and believe it or not, the mango was not fresh nor frozen, but came in a Torani simple syrup bottle with MANGO! written across it. He topped it off with whipped cream and a lid. It was 8am. I threw it away.
On the flipside… (there’s always a flip side), I grabbed one of the premade veggie sandwiches on the way out of town and ate it on the road and it was amazing! It had shredded carrots, goat cheese, sprouts, tomatoes, maybe some hummus. It was delicious!
Maybe not the place for fresh fruit smoothies, but fresh veggies sandwiches?!

We stopped here on the way to Esalen in Big Sur. My word, this is some good ice cream. Thick and creamy and the girl just gave us the hugest scoop! We also had a piece of crumb cake that was good. But the ice cream, WOW! Awesome!

The family members who run this little ice cream shoppe put Ben & Jerry to shame!!! They make a fantastic praline pecan, and their vanilla bean is anything BUT vanilla!!!
Bonus: The charming English tea garden that surrounds this little shoppe, and the revitalizing sea air from Moonstone Beach.