Best coffee shop

Newbury's answer to the North End, Torrefazione Italia is a welcoming little café with split-level seating and scuffed wood floors, done up in hues of ochre, slate, and apple green to match the Umbrian ceramics on display. The coffee and snack selection contains no real surprises, but the mugs are big, the muffins and biscotti are bigger (much), and the momentary break from Starbucksian reality is appreciable.

Meanwhile, it's the little things that count at 1369. This pair of Cantabrigian coffeehouses named for the address of the original, tiny though they may be, are chock full of charming quirks: clocks that show the time in Kenya, staff members prone to dancing behind the counter. Likewise, the coffee menu's emphasis on the basics makes the occasional flourishes that much more special, as with flavored lattes like the Toasted Almond, combining chocolate and almond syrups, or the Chocolate Turtle, with chocolate and hazelnut syrups, plus a drizzle of caramel. And what with simple French-bread pizzas for lunch and an array of bar cookies for teatime, less really does begin to smack of more.

Torrefazione Italia, 85 Newbury Street, (617) 424-0951. 1369, 1369 Cambridge Street, Cambridge, (617) 576-1369; 757 Mass Ave, Cambridge, (617) 576-4600.