Empório Daruma

good coffee in são paulo rewards the people who actually look for it, and rua augusta is as good a place as any to start. empório daruma sits across four floors on one of the city's most reliably interesting streets, in cerqueira césar, where the neighborhood shifts registers every few blocks. you're not going to stumble in here by accident. the address alone, 1917 on augusta, puts you in the middle of everything the street does well, which is a lot. regulars here are genuinely devoted, not in a casual way but in the way that suggests the coffee has given them a reason to return more than once. cerqueira césar afternoons, specifically, are worth planning around.