Travel Muse Magazine

The best cup of coffee in Ann Arbor is located in the basement of the quietly luxurious lifestyle brand Shinola. The Detroit-based company’s Main Street building is squat and black with glass doors and an orange-lit interior. It has a large black clock hanging outside a corner of the building. Inside, there are gold and silver watches on display, as one might expect from a “designed and built in Detroit” brand that makes high-end watches and leather goods in Michigan. To the left of the entrance, music emits up a flight of stone steps that leads to the basement, where the experience I’m here for begins.

Down those stairs is Shinola Cafe; its walls lined with seating, typically full of students working on their laptops. It feels spacious thanks to a high ceiling and is dimly lit except for a few bright lights shining above the bar, where a small menu advertises specialty lattes and matcha.

I never hear anyone else order the pour-over coffee when I’m here, but it is incredible… and the real thing to get. When I order it from Iain Marshall, longtime barista at Shinola Cafe, he walks out with a black ceramic cup to my table. The coffee smells like roasted chestnuts but the flavor is initially sweet, like a fruit. It shifts into a mixture of sour and bitter which tastes light and pleasant. It is closer to a complex tea than the dark mystery mug of questionable liquid I first tried at twelve years old. The specific flavor of every cup is different, but Iain manages to bring out a delicate balance of flavors that has kept me going back ever since I first found out about it a year ago. 

Pour-over was initially introduced in 1900s Germany by Amalie Auguste Melitta Bentz, a German housewife who was “dissatisfied with the taste of percolator coffee,” where coffee grounds are heated in a pot along with the water. She created a method of brewing with “blotting paper and a can punctured with a nail.” Simple. Genius. This style of coffee allowed for a less bitter taste and more specificity in extracting flavors. 

It has become increasingly common that specialty coffee shops use pour-over rather than large coffee percolators. It’s a shift that is focusing quality over everything else. Pour-over takes around three minutes per cup. Coffee beans are weighed, ground, and placed into a wet paper filter. Then, near boiling water is introduced to the coffee in rounds, all specifically measured. Everything in this process affects the flavor. It’s something I’ve realized in my own journey to make pour-over, hoping to come close to what I get when Iain makes it.

The Shinola Cafe began as a partnership between the watch and leather goods maker and Commonwealth Coffee in 2015. Then Shinola decided to just do its own thing. Not surprisingly, “there was just no infrastructure in place for a coffee shop,” Iain, who worked for the cafe before the split and eventually found himself running the cafe solo, told me. They had no way of contacting coffee roasters to get beans and had lost their coffee machine. There were no longer manuals on when and how to maintain the cafe, no rules set in place; “All of that had to be built.” And over the years it was. 

Although it is usually incredibly busy here, this cafe is a “word of mouth” business. They don’t have a website or Instagram page. They’re practically invisible online, which seems unheard of in 2026. Recently they partnered with sml wrld cafe, a matcha brand, which has brought them some publicity. Iain told me the Shinola Cafe has been through many “highs and lows,” but they’re currently doing the best they ever have.

What struck me most when I sat down to talk to Iain about the cafe for this story is how incredibly dedicated he is. I had known of his devotion to coffee before from our casual conversations on my frequent visits, of course. But his level of commitment goes far past delightful drinks. If you stop and just listen for a minute, you’ll realize it too. The music played here is always fresh. Turns out that’s because Iain “tries to never play the same song twice.” Meaning in the ten years of business at the Shinola Cafe, a conscious effort has been made to keep music new every day. He personally vets every song, looking for something “that is worth close-listening to, but not overwhelming.” A majority of that is electronic music, which he finds on his bus ride from Ypsilanti to Ann Arbor. 

Honestly, when I think about it, it makes sense. Shinola is all about craftsmanship. And that’s what you’ll find pleasantly carrying on in basement cafe. It’s a curated experience, not just a good coffee.

When I was first introduced to the Shinola Cafe on a date, I didn’t expect it to become a weekly ritual. But it quickly did. I enjoy being here. It really is the best coffee in town. Consider coming to experience it for yourself — for the drinks and a conversation with Iain.