Eureka! Cafe

Love this place! It has very friendly staff, high-​quality ice cream, and a selection of delicious baked treats. Need I say more? Okay, how about: «Affogato!» (espresso over ice-​cream). Yum!!!

SMELLS. SO. INCREDIBLE. I wish my house smelled like this coffee shop.

Bill has gotten in some amazing items that make Christmas gift giving easy.
The jam trio is a perfect gift. So many more items too
Great Hot Chocolate!!!
He is friendly and always ready to help you

The cutest and calmest of the ever growing number of coffee places in the Castro. The nicest guys own it

My friend and I stumbled across Eureka Café while walking through the Castro. Worn out and famished from last minute Christmas shopping, we stopped and went inside to discover a cute, pleasant surprise. This place evokes the feeling of what a coffee shop is supposed to be – a social setting. Too often, we’ve allowed places like Starbucks and Peet’s to take over our idea of coffee, but here your memory is refreshed and you remember the art of coffee. I ordered a Fogbank, which is hot chocolate, a scoop of vanilla ice cream and steamed milk. My friend ordered an Affogato, which is espresso, a scoop of vanilla ice cream and steamed milk. We enjoyed our drinks! We loved how the café had a local feel to it, and when I mean local I mean original San Francisco, not the post dotcom boom or tech boom city, but the radical, activist San Francisco of the 60s, 70s and 80s. All of their coffee and food is locally sourced, which is amazing, and they even sell coffee beans and local jam and preserves. Bill the barista is so kind! If you go, plan to order a drink and sit to relax and take in the atmosphere of the place. You will not regret it! Run, don’t walk, to Eureka Café!

Very nice little café type coffee shop with ice cream/​root beer floats/​desserts… Pretty much anything to cure a sweet tooth !!
The owner is very nice… Will explain anything about the drinks… Oh try the cold apple cider drink !

The best place to stop on a hot day and recharge your batteries. My partner and I both got spiders to drink. I went with root beer and she got coke, both with vanilla ice cream. It really hit the spot.
The mixture of creamy foam just melded the ice cream and soft drink beautifully. Really helped hold us over until dinner as it part filling, and part refreshing.
The atmosphere was very chilled (was a week day) and laid back, which is what you want. News papers were available to read. Bright and colour and clean.
The owner was a super cool dude who was only to happy to help two weary travellers who both had so much to learn about the west coast.

This is probably one of the few local businesses in San Francisco that serves coffee (with pastries of course), sodas and ice cream! I occassionally come here to get drinks or desserts.
Bill, the manager/​staff (possibly the owner) is really nice. He’s very generous and accomodating. I asked him about the difference types of Rainbow Floats and he explained in a simple but understandable way.
I just wish he would get some help in serving the customers since I usually see him as the only person running the business, especially on busy hours.
I could probably say this one of my favorite spot in San Francisco. I’ll definitely bring more people in the future if I get the chance.

Eureka! I’m super excited that I finally decided to venture into this café. The fact that their name includes the word CAFE is misleading because they have so much more than coffee and tea. Through Unilocal,I discovered that they specialize in ice cream floats, and now I want to come here on every hot San Francisco day.
The staff is super knowledgeable about their selections and welcoming to all customers. They have a refrigerator stocked with a million types of sodas that you can mix with any ice cream they have. One of the staff members patiently walked us through all of them. It was quite nice. I would highly recommend the Dreamsicle, which is orange soda with vanilla ice cream. There are places to sit inside and outside, or you can walk around and snack on your ice cream cone or float. Wonderful place and probably my favorite store on the block.

It took me quite a while to stop in here because I would think «hmmmm, yet another coffee house.» Well, today, Lord by the signboard’s promise of a root beer float, I did stop in and boy! was I wrong.
What the Eureka Café is, is a wonderful neighborhood ice cream parlor and soda shop that only sells and uses really good organic ingredients staffed by friendly gracious people.
Now my challenge will be having the willpower to only stop in when my calorie deficit is high enough. Nordic ski machine, anyone?

I highly recommend the brown sugar banana & Lavender ice cream. Blue bottle coffee & they serve the cream in a cold milk bottle. Friendly, knowledgable staff & local jams for sale. Yummy baked goods available as well.

Nice, calm and clean place, as well as owner. Got a mocha, and café latte and two little chocolate cakes.
The frosting was a little stale, but despite that, we enjoyed the atmosphere. Hope to come back

We were killing some time, waiting for Castro Theatre. When we walked by, the «organic ice cream» sign outside caught my eye!
We were immediately greeted by Bill (I figured out it was him by observing the existing Unilocal photos on here). He was very friendly and patient in explaining the various floats available. It was a tough decision, because they all sounded delicious and enticing!
We decided to get the «Castro Princess» for $ 6.75: a very pretty pink float. Bill asked if we wanted chocolate or vanilla ice cream. Since we couldn’t decide, he gave us both. He was very attentive & asked how we liked it, etc. We had some leftover Shirley Temple in the bottle. If we’re ever back in the area, we’re definitely interested in trying the other flavors!

Adorable, but a bit expensive for the ice cream (which is the reason we went.)
It is also very small on the inside.

For me courtesy is the most important thing. The ice cream is not bad but the manner of the owner, the bald one, was very rude.
He made me feel like an intruder, not like a customer.
A bear would give you a warmer welcome in his cave than him in his café.

Friendly people. Upscale yet «neighborhoody» vibe, which is a rare balance. Reasonably prices, as far as overpriced coffee goes.
I can’t say that my coffee was as amazing as Illy Espressamente, my favorite, but I had to go five-​star regardless, just based on the vibe of the place and the above-​average coffee. I’m gonna have to try a few more variations to see if any of them are really top-​notch, before I decide if I’ll stick to five. But it’s definitely a 4.5, by any scale, at least.

Two story restaurant in the Castro. The catfish was a solid but uninspired version of fish and chips. Duck confit leg was much more interesting. Beet salad was very good.
Service was very good on a busy Friday. This is a good choice is you find yourself in the Castro.

Stopped by for an aftermeal dessert (always have a separate stomach for dessert!).
The customer service alone gets 5 stars, the kind man was attentive and fulfilled my friend and I’s wishes for samples. We ended up getting coffee and mint chocolate chip (which wasn’t green! I was surprised that mint chocolate chip could come looking like vanilla flavor, but I guess that’s even better since it has less food coloring in its product), both which were made my Tara’s Organic Ice Cream. The employee’s demeanor was exceptionally helpful, charming, and made me want to go back there and become his friend. The ice cream was also delicious and satisfying, it satisfied my sweet tooth without being overly cloying. I would definitely come back!

Not too impressed with the ice cream here. Got the brown sugar banana, which sounds good but was a little too sweet. I don’t like that they put giant chocolate chips in it. It’s the kind you have to chew on, because it’s too big to melt in your mouth. I don’t like that. Would be 100x better if they had banana chunks in it! I got it with the waffle cone. It’s hard to mess up a waffle cone, but the cone here was not good at all. It tasted a little old. Maybe I’ve been spoiled since I’ve been going to the Ice Cream Bar every week, but this place paled so much in comparison. It’s also not that cheap ($ 3.75 for ice cream + waffle cone)
The people who work here seem nice though, so I might come back and just not get the ice cream. The biscotti and cookies in the jar look pretty good.

Now here’s a charmer that was a long time coming since Gelateria Naia left the premises several years ago. Luckily it wasn’t taken over by another Starbucks, or heavens to Harvey, a Chipotle. I’ve had enough burrito bowls to choke a small burro en route to the Mission. No, Castro residents and local business partners Patrick Batt and Bill Singleton have something more appropriate in mind for this still idiosyncratic neighborhood, a kindly café stocked with high-​quality items like Blue Bottle coffee, fresh baked goods from the Bayview-​based bakery Crêpe & Brioche (photo:
), and Straus organic ice cream (photo:
).
It was the latter that drew my and Jamie W.‘s attention after wolfing down our cheeseburgers and fries next door at Slider’s. Hey, the combo is a deal. Stop judging us. For $ 3 each, we received single scoops in our cups and leisurely perused the Bay Area Reporter, of course. Jamie tried the Brown Sugar Banana, but I scored the more satisfying flavor in ordering straight-​ahead Coffee, you should pardon the expression (photo:
). The name is derived partially from the original name for this patch of the city, Eureka Valley, before it became the Castro. But I think it also comes from the Gold Rush-​era phrase, «Eureka…I found it.» Yep, I think we did.
ICE CREAM — 4 stars… creamy goodness at a leisurely pace
AMBIANCE — 4 stars… quietly unassuming space (photo:
)
SERVICE — 4 stars… friendly and helpful
TOTAL — 4 stars… finally a Castro spot to satisfy your sweet tooth without biting into a phallic-​shaped hot cookie