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Bongo Java
Bongo Java opened at 4 p.m. on March 28, 1993, inside an 80-year-old house across from Belmont University, founded by Bob Bernstein at a moment when specialty coffee barely existed as a category in Nashville. That timing matters — Bongo opened, as its own history puts it, long before Nashville was cool and cold brew was a mainstream order, making it the city's oldest continuously operating coffeehouse by a wide margin. The café has stayed at the same Belmont Boulevard address since day one, growing from a homemade sign hung between the front porch pillars into a genuine neighborhood institution serving students, musicians, and artists who've treated the porch and front rooms as an extension of their own living rooms for more than three decades. Bongo Java is also Nashville's first — and still only — Certified Organic coffee roaster, with every bean carrying Fair Trade certification, a sourcing commitment that predates most of the specialty coffee industry's current interest in the subject. The menu has its own set of local legends, from the "Bongo Basics" cinnamon bun to the "Nun Bun," a cinnamon roll whose burn pattern was once widely noted to resemble Mother Teresa's profile — the kind of only-in-a-neighborhood-coffeehouse story that a chain could never manufacture. Bongo Java's roasting operation has since grown well beyond the original house, supplying its sister café Fido across town in Hillsboro Village, but the Belmont Boulevard original has kept its identity as a lived-in, slightly bohemian hangout rather than scaling into a showroom for the brand. For a Nashville coffee list, Bongo Java is the essential "this is where it started" entry — an 80-year-old house turned coffeehouse that's been Nashville's oldest specialty coffee address since 1993, still serving Certified Organic, Fair Trade coffee across from Belmont University.
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Crema Coffee Roasters
Crema Coffee Roasters was founded in January 2008 by Rachel and Ben Lehman, who are widely credited as pioneers of Nashville's third-wave coffee movement — the shift toward treating coffee sourcing, roasting, and brewing with the same seriousness given to wine or craft beer. Crema's in-house roasting program launched in 2011, and the company is generally recognized as Nashville's original specialty coffee roaster, predating most of the city's now-crowded independent coffee scene. The flagship downtown location on Hermitage Avenue is affectionately called the "mothership" by Crema's own staff, and it houses more than just a café counter — a dedicated Coffee Education and Events Lab hosts public classes on brewing and sourcing, treating customers as students of the craft rather than just people picking up a to-go cup. Crema describes itself as relationally sourcing coffee from farmers the company knows and trusts directly, and it operates as a zero-waste roaster with carbon-neutral ambitions — a sourcing and operations philosophy that's stayed consistent as the business has grown to three Nashville locations plus a fourth in Brentwood, along with an e-commerce arm shipping beans well beyond Middle Tennessee. That growth hasn't diluted the original Hermitage Avenue café's role as the actual center of the business — it's still where the roasting, the education programming, and the company's identity are most concentrated, even as Crema's beans have made their way onto menus at cafés and restaurants across the region. National recognition has followed, with Crema named among the "100 Best Coffee Shops in America" by outside coffee publications. For a Nashville coffee list, Crema is the essential "this is where Nashville third-wave coffee actually started" entry — a 2008 downtown roaster whose direct-sourcing, education-forward approach helped define the city's specialty coffee scene before most of its competitors existed.
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