Slamming espressos, Seattle style
Wednesday, July 13, 2011 at 9:16PM I was passing through Seattle yesterday and had a couple hours to kill, so over a span of two hours, I did my own mini coffee crawl, hitting three different cafés.
For the record, I really like Seattle. It seems quite a bit larger than Portland, in a good way. The city is so hilly that from lots of the intersections downtown you can see out across Puget Sound and over to the Olympic Peninsula. These views make Seattle seem more open than it otherwise might be.
The first stop of my coffee junket was at Cherry Street Coffee House. Cherry Street has several different cafes in Seattle, but the one I visited was actually on Cherry Street (the original, perhaps?).
Cherry Street Coffee House
One of the reasons that I went to Cherry Street was that I had read that the café’s coffee was roasted by Dillano’s, Roast Magazine’s 2010 Roaster of the Year. I ordered an espresso and went to sit down.
The café itself has two levels. The coffee bar is at street level, and the seating is down a set of stairs, where the café spreads out under the store next door. It reminded me of an old speakeasy, one of those secret places where people could gather discretely to buck the rules of Prohibition during the 1920s and 1930s.
On one wall, rather, in one wall, a walk-in safe serves as the café’s office, and toward the back of the seating area, a faux fireplace is painted onto the wall. Two old, bright red stuffed chairs sit in front of the fire, welcoming you to sit down. With no windows in the seating area, the café is a bit dark, but it suffices as a place to work and drink coffee.
The espresso was made from the Cherry Street House Blend, and is unique to Cherry Street cafés. The barista told me that it was a medium roast, but if that’s the case, I have to question my understanding of what a medium roast is. The coffee in my cup had a nice thick crema that stuck to the sides of the cup, and the first sip or two, I tasted some strong almond flavors and fittingly enough, cherries. After the nice beginning though, all hints of sweetness and subtleties disappeared off and what was left was very smoky. Perhaps I’m just being oversensitive, but I was disappointed how it finished.
After finishing the espresso, I headed up the street toward Pike Place Market and my favorite store in Seattle, DeLaurenti. DeLaurenti is an Italian food import shop, and it seems like anytime I visit the city, I am drawn to the shelves full of Italian tomatoes, meats, cheeses, olives, pastas and wines. I can spend hours in that store, concocting recipes in my mind and dreaming about getting on a plane to fly to the Mediterranean. If I was going to get some more coffee, though, there was no time to linger, so I grabbed a sandwich and left quickly, to avoid falling prey to the temptations residing deeper within the store.
A must-visit
Originally, I had hoped to go to Stella Caffè for some espresso (I had been thinking about it since my trip to Coffee Fest last October), but to my chagrin, the café that was rumored to have the best Robusta-based espresso in the city is no longer a café. I don’t know the story, but when I called to see what time they closed down the espresso bar, the woman on the other end informed me that they were now a bar and not a café. Foiled again. If anyone knows where I can get some of Stella’s stellar espresso, please let me know.
Instead of going to Stella, I walked up Pike Street to Seattle Coffee Works. Seattle Coffee Works is a small roastery/café located right across the street from the first Starbucks store. The café has a slow coffee bar on one side, with pourovers and vacuum pots, and on the other side it has an espresso bar. I chose the espresso side (surprise, surprise). The barista told me that although they usually had a single-origin espresso available, they had just run out of the Panama and were down to the Space blend, the café’s signature espresso. My impression was that it was just a bit on the tart side, but overall, much better than the espresso I had drunk a few minutes before.
Seattle Coffee Works
After downing the Space blend, I was feeling up for one more stop. Someone told me that Fonté was a nearby place that was doing good things, and since it was located between Seattle Coffee Works and the train station, it would be a great place to stop for the third leg of my trifecta.
About five minutes later, I was seated at a table at Fonté, waiting for my cappuccino.
Fonté Coffee and Wine Bar
Fonté has a pretty hip feel to it (like most places I regularly frequent*). In addition to being a coffee shop, it also doubles as a wine bar. It looked like a great place to spend a happy hour, so I was looking forward to my cappuccino.
Chic
The foam on the cappuccino had a nice texture, but the espresso was roasted so dark that it completely overpowered the milk. A cappuccino should be balanced—both the milk and the coffee flavors should come through. In this cappuccino, though, you could not taste any of the natural sweetness of the steamed milk. The coffee dominated. It was too much for me.
Visiting two cafés (out of three) that had super dark roast espressos left me disappointed but wondering, is this type of roast just the traditional “Seattle style?” Perhaps this is due to the influence of Starbucks in the city? Starbucks has a reputation for serving dark-roasted espresso, but its espresso doesn’t have as much of the smokiness as the espressos at Cherry Street, Fonté or Caffè d’Arte (another Seattle-based roaster whose espresso I have had in the past).
Do I have the wrong expectations for what espresso ought to taste like? After all, I live in Portland, where lighter roasts are the norm. Should I learn to appreciate this dark roast for what it is, instead of thinking it should taste like something else, or are the beans being treated without the care they deserve? After yesterday, these questions linger in my mind. . . I would be very interested to hear what someone from Seattle has to say about this.
Here are a couple more pictures of things I saw during my visit:
Century Link Field just won't sound the same
One of the stops I made was at Qwest (soon to be Century Link) Field, which is right next to the Amtrak station in South Seattle. It’s a nice looking stadium and it was humbling to walk right up next to the behemoth and look down on the field inside. I don’t know what it is about being up next to huge objects, but they make you feel small, especially when you’re not in a crowd of people. A stadium like that is a testament to human ingenuity. It doesn’t compare to standing next to Mt. Rainier, but I was still impressed.
A closer look
The city skyline, seen from the steps of the stadium.
The Starbucks mother ship (corporate headquarters). I like the sirens rising out of the tower on top.
This statue was outside the Seattle Art Museum. One of these times I’m going to make it inside to see what treasures reside there.
Overall, I enjoyed my trip to the Emerald City, and would have been content to stay for a little longer (there are several more cafés I want to check out). The train wouldn’t wait for me, though, so at 5:30 sharp, we pulled out of the station and headed south. Until next time, Seattle.
*sarcasm alert
Reader Comments (7)
What brought you to Seattle? (Besides the train) :-)
It is a shame that Stella is gone and Fonte and Cherry Street remain. There are a few roasters in Seattle that still think it is 1990. They roast dark. Their customers tend to drown their drinks in milk and sugar, so they survive.
Seattle has many great roasters: Victrola, Vivace, Stumptown, Vita, Herkimer, Seattle Coffee Works, Kuma, 7 Roasters, Velton and a few more that I'm forgetting. None of these roast like it is 1990.
2 of the 3 cafes you went to are among the shittiest cafes in seattle, and that's why your coffee sucked. fonte is actually doing some neat stuff, from time to time, and they buy amazing green coffee, though i agree it's often roasted too heavily - this is not because their roaster lacks talent, but rather, because their business profile demands coffee be roasted in a 1990s "frasier" style. it's a shame, really, but next time you're there, try something that isn't blended, or ask the barista on bar what he or she recommends for a lighter roast.
the next time you're in seattle, enjoy coffees with a more contemporary roast profile at trabant, victrola, herkimer, kuma, and of course the two stumptown locations. the "italian" profile roast at vivace certainly isn't light, but for what it is, it's among the best shots of espresso in america.
It's a shame you missed the "right" coffee shops and got a completely wrong impression about the Seattle coffee scene. It is a parallel universe of amazing espressos where the concept of "dark roast" does not exist.
Next time I would recommend you walk up Pike or Pine to Capitol Hill, where you have within walking distance Victrola (2x), Vita, Vivace (2x), Stumptown (2x, but you get enough of them in PDX), Porchlight (Herkimer), Tougo and the all new Analog Coffee (Herkimer) and Arabica Lounge (also Stumptown, but pretty unique).
This neighborhood has the highest concentration of coffee shops per block, but stick to the list and don't go inside any other you stumble upon.
If you get to go to Greenwood Ave, you have also within walking distance Herkimer, Vita, Makeda (7 Roasters) and Neptune.
But if you can only stay around the train station there is still Trabant, Vita and Zeitgeist (I don't like the latter that much but is better than the two you went to).
By the way, that Starbucks across the street from Seattle Coffee Works is not the first store, even the one on Pike Place across the market is not the "original". Their first store was on the corner of Western and Virginia, in a building that doesn't exist anymore.
And thank you for the review of the Cherry Street Coffee House. I avoided going there because I know the coffee isn't good, but a visit to that Seattle Underground room will be worth while.
Looking forward to your next report!
Why are some Seattle roasts so dark? Because that's what *their* customers want. Specialty, "gourmet", "third wave" coffee might seem huge for us who are inside but it is a niche.
Most people don't drink coffee because of the tasting notes, they drink to get *caffeinated*. They think coffee needs to be bitter and burnt to be *strong*.
Is it different in Portland? What would I think about the coffee in Portland if I spent two hours between train station and downtown and didn't find any Stumptown, Ristretto, Barista, Sterling, Coava, Coffeehouse5, Water Avenue, Heart, Red E, Public Domain, Albina, Courier?
Thank you Seattle, for having strong opinions (and for the correction about the Pike Place Starbucks)! I have a great list of places to visit the next time I am up there.
@Ray That's a good point about a majority of people wanting caffeine and not caring about getting the best coffee. You can find plenty of mediocre to bad coffee places down here too. I was just surprised that I did not like the coffee at Cherry St and Fonté because the former was roasted by Dillano's (roaster of the year, according to Roast Magazine) and the latter was recommended by a barista at one of Seattle's better third wave roasters (listed in the comments above, but I didn't want to embarrass the place).
If you came down and didn't find any of the cafes you mentioned (or Spella, Extracto, Coffeehouse Northwest, Sterling, Cloud Seven), you would have certainly had some bad luck. At the very least, the odds are that you would stumble onto a place that serves Stumptown coffee. There must be at least 50 cafes selling it in Portland (I would guess it's closer to 100).
I thought that Fonte's coffee was a Dillano's private label - no wonder the similarity between Cherry and Fonte roast profiles.