Hard knocks - listening to true stories of life at Albina Press (Hawthorne)

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The Albina Press on Hawthorne is much hipster than the AP on Albina. Maybe it is the neighborhood, maybe it is the café space itself, or maybe it just happened to be the day I was there, but I stepped inside the café and quickly felt at home in the café.

The coffee bar is unique in its arrangement. Instead of having the bar up against one wall of the café, as most cafés do, at AP Hawthorne the bar is located in the center of the café. The cash register and espresso machine take up two sides of the rectangle, and an L-shaped table for seating form the other two sides. The open space allows patrons to check out the baristas’ operations from all sides.

AP Hawthorne

My espresso, served in a sunny yellow demitasse, was solid. AP is a Stumptown café, and every day I grow more and more accustomed to the Hair Bender blend. If I ever leave Portland, I’ll probably look back with affection on my time in the city, when I could get Stumptown’s tangy, chocolaty blend in nearly every part of the city (I never would have imagined saying that, based on my first impression of the blend, which was not favorable).

Although I did have a couple good shots of espresso while I was at the café, the enduring memory from my visit will be my conversation with “Ron” (not his real name). I was sitting at a window table, writing the next “great American novel” (more accurately, the next CPDX blog post), when to my left, I sensed someone staring at me. For a while, I avoided looking over, but the person didn’t seem to be in any hurry to leave. Finally my resolve to avoid looking faltered and I lifted my eyes from the screen to figure out who it was staring my direction.

A gentleman in his late forties or early fifties, with a round build, a round, balding head and a scraggly beard was standing about five feet away holding a latte in his hand. He looked like he wanted to talk, and I apparently looked like a good person to talk to. Generally, I don’t mind listening to people. A lot of times they just have things they want to get off their chest, and you never know when they start talking what kinds of interesting things you might learn. My only hope is that they don’t end up asking me for money.

Ron’s first question, breaking the ice, was to ask me how to look someone up on the computer. According to him, he didn’t have any computer experience and he was trying to find his kids. It had been about 15 years since he had seen them. He and his wife had divorced years ago (on bad terms, I presume) and he had lost contact with them. Since they were now adults, he could contact them without any legal repercussions.

I vaguely gave him some advice on how to use Google, unsure if it was any of my business to help him find someone who had not seen him in over a decade—someone who might not want to be found. I thought that my advice would be the end of our conversation, but I was wrong. Ron was looking for someone to share his story with.

The story he told me was a sad one. Ron had been in the Navy for 12 years, and while he was there he met his wife. They married and had two kids, but then he had an accident on duty and his injuries made it impossible for him to perform his service, so he was discharged. His wife stayed in, and was deployed to the Persian Gulf during the war to liberate Kuwait. While over there, she fell prey to loneliness and the temptations of war, coming back pregnant with someone else’s child. When Ron found out, he “took off his ring, handed it to her and left.”

Out of the service, Ron tried to find a job, but the stress he was under and the alcohol he was drinking (heavily, in his words) weakened his heart to the point of having “four heart attacks.” His condition led the state to take away his driver’s license, making it impossible to keep a job, so he “retired,” going on state disability insurance and VA benefits to support himself. It was during these tough times that under duress (according to him), he signed over his parental rights, agreeing that he would not try to contact his sons until they were adults, with the threat of jail time for violating the agreement. Now that they were both over 18, Ron was hoping to contact them one more time to see if they would be interested in rebuilding some kind of relationship with their father.

It wasn’t easy to listen to the story, as I could imagine some of the struggles he has had over the last decade and a half. He did not seem as downbeat as he might have, though there was a lot of loneliness that came through in his voice. He probably was just looking for someone to listen to him.

During our conversation, Ron pulled out a blue folder and showed me a couple pictures of his sons and some other things that he had in his bag. He also showed me a copy of the birth certificate of one of his sons, his old marriage license and a copy of his VA benefit application from twenty years ago.

The stuff he carried with him was revealing. When our lives are filled with uncertainty, we cling to concrete things from our past that are unchanging—memories, documents and photographs that remind us of times when we thought we had life figured out. When life seems to slip from our grasp, our instinct is to find something to hold onto, an anchor that gives us a sense of stability. This can lead us to hold tightly to possessions that help us feel normal. At least that’s the impression I got from listening to him and seeing his documents.

After leaving the café, Ron’s next stop was going to be the coin store that was next door (he was looking for some collector quarters), and then it was on to the VA and the library. At least that was what he said. You never know with someone like Ron how much of their story is based in reality an how much has been elaborated in his mind. Watching him leave, I could only hope for the best for him as I resumed my writing.

By and large, I enjoyed my visit to the Hawthorne incarnation of the Albina Press. The café is large, with ample seating. You can comfortably gather with a large group or you can hide yourself in a corner with a good book or your laptop if you don’t feel like talking to anyone. Then again, you might find yourself in an unexpected conversation, ready or not.

Vitals

Address: 5012 SE Hawthorne, Portland, OR 97215 (map)

Coffee: Stumptown

Free Wi-Fi? Fast

Recommendations? Sitting outside and enjoying the last vestiges of summer, coffee in hand

Website: nope

TaborSpace - Coffee and Contemplation

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Starting on the north side of Mount Tabor, if you were to descend toward downtown Portland via Belmont Ave., you would find at a crook in the road a grand-looking gray stone church with a matching gray roof. The sign in front of the main entrance would tell you that the old building is the Mount Tabor Presbyterian Church, built in 1910. On one of Portland’s gray cloudy days, you might find it hard to know where the church ended and the sky began (which, in a metaphorical sense, is fitting). On a sunny day, though, with the bright blue sky in the background, the 100 year-old church jumps out as a landmark that is worth a second look.

Ever the explorer, you could hop up six concrete steps at the base of the church’s bell tower, through a set of double doors and into a room that might surprise you.

Atypical coffee shop

What is this, you might ask yourself, a coffee shop inside a church?

Yes. The café you would have stumbled upon is called TaborSpace, and it resides in one wing of the Mount Tabor Presbyterian Church. I made my first visit to the café the other day.

Walking in, the first thing you see is a row of small wooden tables to your right, along the wall beneath a row of stained-glass windows. When I arrived, they were full of people chatting over coffee. There did not appear to be space for me to sit down, but I was mistaken.

After the barista greeted me and took my order, she asked if I needed change. I was perplexed—baristas don’t usually ask that question (the only people who do are waiters, and they shouldn’t—but that’s a discussion for another day). After a quick glance at what was inside my wallet, I told her I didn’t.

“Have you been here before?” she asked.

“No,” I replied, not knowing any better.

“We operate as a non-profit,” she said, “so we only take donations. You pay what you want to and put your money in the box. We have suggested prices up here [pointing at the menu board behind the counter], but you don’t have to follow them. If you want to use a card, you can. swipe it and enter how much you want to donate.”

With only a $1 bill and a $10 dollar bill in my possession, I needed some change. The barista cheerfully made change for me from the cash register, and I put my $2 (the suggested donation) into the box while she made the espresso.

The tables were still full when I got my coffee. Looking for somewhere to sit down, I stuck my head around the corner and peered through a set of wide-open double doors. I was struck by the quiet beauty of the scene in front of me. The space was dark, with a mahogany brown color theme. Seeing few people inside, I hesitated.

“That’s the commons,” said the barista, who noticed my questioning look. “Feel free to sit in there.”

Taking her encouragement, I walked in and sat at one of the many tables.

The ‘commons’ is a great space. At first, you get the impression that you are entering a sacred area, a place for contemplation and deep thought. Large, imposing wooden beams hang overhead and brightly-colored stained-glass windows line the walls, adding an air of splendor.  Sitting there, I felt like I should keep quiet, or at least speak in hushed tones.

You don't see windows like this in most cafés

Unfortunately, once the awe of the space wore off, I realized it wasn’t quite as tranquil as I first thought. From a table along the wall, you could hear classic rock music from the café speakers filtering through the doors. Two men chatted across the room in front of a large white hearth. A few minutes later a group of retired men gathered around two tables pushed together and began to talk loudly, their voices echoing throughout the chamber. They looked like a crowd you would expect to see at a local diner, lingering over coffee and telling stories about fishing or home improvement projects.

Sipping a cup of Ristretto Roasters’ Beaumont Blend, I put Bach’s Brandenburg Concerto on through my headphones and got to work. The music helped restore some of the grandeur.

As I sat there, I thought it would be nice if the people would treat the commons more like a library, speaking quietly or not at all. The space is inspiring, and it would make the perfect place to write or to read a book.

However, TaborSpace is a meeting place—a commons, after all—so it is good that visitors feel comfortable using it as such. I just recommend you get there early, before they do.

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Vitals
Address: 5441 SE Belmont, Portland, OR 97214 (map)
Phone: 503-238-3904
Hours: Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, Friday 7:30am-4:30pm
            Wednesday 7:30am-9pm       
            Saturday 8:30-4pm
            Sunday CLOSED
Coffee: Ristretto Roasters (pastries by Nuvrei)
Free Wi-Fi? Yes (ask for password) 
Recommendations? Arriving early to take advantage of the quiet
Website: http://taborspace.org/

Starbucks' new concept

The other evening, after stopping for sushi with fellow MIM alumnus Cory Klatik, we were looking for some coffee down in the Pearl District. It was about 7pm, which meant that our choices for finding coffee close by were limited. We walked over to Caffè Umbria thinking it would be open until eight, but they now close at seven Monday through Wednesday.

Stymied in that effort, we decided to try the new Starbucks across from Powell’s Books. Cory knew it was open until 11pm, and since I hadn’t been there to check it out yet, I agreed.

If you haven’t heard, in an effort to increase late afternoon and evening sales, Starbucks has opened a few new concept stores where they sell beer and wine. The new Starbucks in the Pearl is the first of this type of store outside the Seattle area. The store’s interior design is quite a bit different than a typical Starbucks, with more wood paneling and lounge-style furniture. It has a nice ambience. Nonetheless, it is not so different that you forget you’re in a Starbucks.

More elegant, but still very familiar

For the first time ever, I tried a single-origin espresso at Starbucks—in addition to the regular espresso, they were also serving the Kenya. It was the first time I had ever seen a single-origin espresso available there, so I couldn’t help but try it. My first impression: if you are really craving a single-origin in the evening and Starbucks is your only option, pony up and spend the $9.00 for the single-origin Pinot Noir instead of espresso. Your money will be better spent. Trust me.

Another option would be to cross the street and go to the World Cup Coffee in Powell’s, also open until 11pm. You won’t find any single-origin espresso or comfortable chairs, but you will get better coffee. 

Forty years of highs, lows and everything in between: Jim Roberts, one of Portland's original "Coffee People"

I recently met with Jim Roberts, owner of Jim & Patty’s Coffee on Northeast Fremont, to hear the story of his friendly neighborhood café and its quirky sense of humor. I also wanted to learn about the history of Coffee People, a Portland coffee company founded by Roberts and his wife Patty. Coffee People, like Stumptown today, was once the beloved local brand trying to expand nationally. During our interview, Roberts shared the long history of Coffee People, and also gave me some insight into some of the challenges associated with trying to grow a company into a national brand. 

Jim and Patty Roberts

Starting out in the ‘70s

Sitting down to talk with Jim Roberts, you get the sense you are talking with someone who has seen just about everything during his time in business, someone who has had successes and failures but who has also managed to keep things in perspective.

The Roberts, who have been married for 41 years, started out selling coffee in Eugene in 1973. At the time, Jim was attending the University of Oregon, and in order to raise money for school, they began to sell coffee at Eugene’s Saturday Market.

In those days, the Roberts bought their coffee from a little company called Coffee Bean Coffee Company, also located in Eugene. Jeff Ferguson, who Jim called the “coffee pioneer of Oregon,” founded the small coffee roaster.

“When Jeff started, he had a little counter, 150 square feet and a roaster. He stood behind the counter and sold his coffee out of a jar. I loved the coffee, so it was what we bought and sold at Saturday Market.”

Over the years, Coffee Bean ended up becoming the huge Portland roaster known as Coffee Bean International (CBI). At the time, though, Coffee Bean Coffee was just a small company struggling to survive. It expanded from Eugene into the Portland market, but in 1976, the company went through bankruptcy.

Seeing an opportunity, Jim and Patty bought Coffee Bean’s Portland store, moved to Portland and changed the name of the store from Coffee Bean to Coffee Man. They picked the new name mostly for economic reasons.

“The B-E was easy to change into an M and wouldn’t cost us much, so we called it Coffee Man.”

The birth of Coffee People

The couple eventually sold Coffee Man to a relative and moved to the Oregon Coast. After a few years of roasting coffee there the Roberts moved back to Portland in 1983 and started a new café in Portland called Coffee People. Over the next decade and a half, Coffee People would take them on a roller coaster ride of successes and failures. It would grow from just Jim and Patty selling coffee behind the counter in their lone café, to 48 stores in cities across the country—reaching as far east as Chicago and as far south as Phoenix.

Early on, though, this growth did not look likely. In 1985, just two years after starting Coffee People, the Roberts found themselves without any money, credit, or coffee beans.

“One Monday morning I saw no reason to open,” Jim said, “we didn't have anything to sell and we couldn't buy any more, so I went to CBI and told [Ferguson] that I was done, that we couldn’t do it anymore.”

At the time he met with Ferguson, Roberts owed CBI $4,000. Ferguson and his business partner, Gary Talboy, offered to buy Coffee People for $4,400. Lacking a better offer, Roberts accepted.

“They owned all of it, for $4,400,” he said.

As soon as Jim accepted the offer, Ferguson and Talboy turned around and offered Roberts a job managing Coffee People.

Jim accepted that offer too, and he and Patty began running Coffee People with the idea that they could someday buy back half of it. For five years, the couple ran the company but did not own any of it.  

“Everyone thought we owned it, but we didn't. We put our picture on the logo for job security. I figured if our picture was on it, they would have a hard time firing us,” he said with a chuckle. “They didn't object, so there we were, the public face of this company we didn't own.”

The picture on today's Jim & Patty's sign is the same one that went on the original Coffee People sign

In 1991, just five years later, Coffee People was valued at $2.6 million. The Roberts made a deal with Ferguson to buy half of it, using the earnings of the company to fund the purchase.  

Expansion and Sale

In the mid-1990s, with the economy looking good and Starbucks on the rise, Coffee People prepared to expand nationally.

“Many people thought that there would be a second to Starbucks somewhere—a Burger King to their McDonald’s,” said Roberts.

To fund the expansion, Coffee People started taking small, private offerings, using the money to build new stores. Roberts knew what they were getting into when they accepted the outside investments.

“The proposition is simple. You want to own some of a big company or all of a little company. If you want to see the company meet all its goals, you need that money, but if you lose control, it may not be the same company as before.”

In 1996, with sights set even higher, Coffee People held its initial public offering on Nasdaq. The owners sold about half the company for $9 million. Expectations for growth were high, but it quickly became obvious that things were not going as planned.

“By the second quarter of '96, we found that our expansion was not succeeding. We'd opened all of these stores across the U.S. but they weren't ramping up fast enough. They were losing money and our opportunity to raise more capital was gone. All we could do was seek a buyer.”

Coffee People entered into a reverse merger with Second Cup, the number one coffee chain in Canada at that time. Second Cup was looking to expand into the US, so it bought Coffee People and Gloria Jean’s, another American coffee retailer. Second Cup struggled to incorporate its new acquisitions, however, and about a year later sold them to Diedrich Coffee.

The California-based Diedrich did not have much success with Coffee People either. Instead of re-branding the cafés under its own name, Diedrich kept the Coffee People name. However, customers could sense that the cafés were no longer run like the original Coffee People. In 1998, Roberts left Coffee People, saying that that he “no longer recognized the company.”

A Texas adventure

After leaving Coffee People, Roberts moved to Texas to go to seminary. He was planning to become a minister, but after a short time decided it was not his calling.

The thing that did stick with him from his time in seminary was a love of Texas barbecue. Tired of The Lone Star State, the Roberts moved back to Portland and opened a barbecue restaurant. The restaurant was mortally wounded when 9/11 struck, pushing the US deeper into a recession. The restaurant went bankrupt, costing the Roberts everything they had left from the Coffee People days. They moved to a small apartment in Tigard and tried to start over.

Back in the coffee business

After four years being out of coffee, the Roberts’ non-compete agreement with Diedrich expired, allowing them to get back into the coffee business. In November 2002, Jim and Patty opened up a new shop on Fremont, under the moniker of Jim & Patty's Coffee, which is a beloved neighborhood cafe today. The whole family is involved in the business. Patty is “the boss,” the couple’s daughter is the baker, and both of their sons work in the café.

Jim & Patty’s carries on many of the traditions that started with the original Coffee People. The café has a familiar feel, with plenty of Portland “weird” thrown in for good measure. The quirkiness extends itself to the café’s famed sour cream coffee cakes, which carry names like the “Naughty Supermodel Marionberry” and “Give PEACH a Chance.”

“People still see us as Coffee People. And we basically run it as if it were a Coffee People. Somebody called us a 'post-hippie' phenomenon. We have tie-dye here and there. It's our niche.”

Roberts believes that Jim & Patty’s coffee is of a higher quality than his earlier enterprises. He says that the café’s coffee quality has improved, and he attributes this to its relationship with Stumptown, which roasts coffee for Jim & Patty’s and also trains the café’s baristas.

“The quality of coffee today at Jim & Patty's, because of Stumptown, is much better. We're brewing to much higher standards than we ever did at Coffee People.”

In addition to Stumptown coffee, Jim & Patty’s sells a coffee from Caravan that is a throwback to the 1990s (dark, with an edge to it), as well as the Black Tiger blend, which was Coffee People's most famous brew, and still roasted by the company. The high-caffeine blend (that includes Robusta beans) is anything but subtle. Roberts described the Black Tiger this way:

“It's like country music or thrasher rock. It's not Mozart, but my customers love it. There's sort of a Black Tiger subculture here that comes in and 'drinks the tiger' because they can't get it anywhere else.”

While I was there, I tried a shot of the Black Tiger. I can only say that those who drink the Black Tiger are far tougher than me. It is about the earthiest (think peat moss in a cup) coffee I have ever had. Most of the Portland cafés cringe at the thought of selling anything with Robusta in it, but not Roberts.

 “We're kind of outlaws for doing it [selling the Black Tiger], but that's why we're not part of the “Third Wave.” We've always tried to have the attitude to give the customers what they want, so if they want the Black Tiger, we’ll give it to them.”

Bonding with the neighborhood through tragedy

In addition to the ups and downs that the coffee business has brought them, the Roberts have also dealt with some personal difficulties. One of the Roberts' sons, who was a barista at Jim & Patty’s, committed suicide in 2006. As a result they planned to close the shop for a while, since no one felt like working. In an effort to support the family, people from the Beaumont neighborhood came to the Roberts and told them they wanted to run the café for them while they were grieving.

“Some of the people came out to our apartment in Tigard and said ‘Jim, we'd like to run the store for you,’” Roberts told me. “They asked for the keys and did their best to run the store. People baked things at home and brought them in, made coffee and stood behind the counters. They covered the place with flowers.”

The gesture really cemented the Roberts' commitment to the neighborhood, where they now live. It sounded like they would be there for a while.

“The neighborhood has just treated us like family. We're in a great spot.”

Lessons learned

I asked Jim if there were any lessons that had stuck with him from his years at Coffee People. He brought up the challenges of trying to grow the business into a national chain.

“It's a battle between the experts and accountants trained at a university and the instinctual entrepreneurs who understand an area, and have insight into what the customers want,” he explained. “I'm not saying that the MBAs don't [understand], but Coffee People got invaded by lots of people who knew nothing about the industry.”

At one point, Coffee People hired a CEO who had run other very successful food companies. The new CEO made some decisions that seemed counterintuitive to Roberts. One particularly telling episode happened when the company hired a research firm to help decide which cities Coffee People should expand into.

“I knew we were in trouble, when after paying $25,000 for this study, we were told that Portland was number 38 on the list of cities where Coffee People could be successful. Vicksburg, Mississippi, was number 37 on the list. If you've ever been to Vicksburg [a rural town with a metro population of less than 50,000 people] you'd know that there's something wrong with that. I knew that if that was wrong, the whole thing was probably wrong.”

Although these kinds of problems eventually led to Coffee People’s downfall, Roberts does not foresee the same things happening to Stumptown.* He believes that the situations between Coffee People and Stumptown are very different.

“Stumptown is a more substantial company than Coffee People ever was. We had a lot more stores, but Duane is an international coffee leader and has created a revolution in coffee across the country.”

Easing into retirement

During the interview, Roberts announced that it was his last day at the café.

“The boss took me off the schedule,” he said. “I’m done.”

Though he is done working a regular schedule at the cafe, he said he would probably substitute from time to time.

Any other plans?

“I'm not sure. I'll think of something. I've always wanted to start some other little type of business, just for the fun of it. Starting businesses and trying to make them work is what I enjoy doing.”

When I asked Patty what she thought about his retirement, she said that Jim would still be around.

Jim nodded, knowing it was probably true. With the contented smile of someone who is happy where he is at, he said “I’m going to come down here and just enjoy drinking coffee.”

After hearing about his life in coffee, it is hard to imagine Jim Roberts doing anything but welcoming people into his café and sharing a cup of coffee with them.

*When the recent news of Stumptown’s equity sale to TSG broke, there was a fair amount of chatter around the Portland area about what would happen to one of Portland’s most beloved coffee roasters. Fans of the company’s anti-corporate, rebel-hipster ethos and high-quality coffee worried that once the new owners got hold of the company, the Stumptown experience would change. Their fears were reasonable, as the interests of fast growth and maintaining the same quality are often not aligned.

One stiff shot of cold-brew, neat, from Heart Roasters

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After starting out with a shot of Heart’s Brazil Daterra espresso this morning, I went back to try some of the café’s iced coffee (‘tis the season, after all—despite the rain).

Heart uses a cold-brew process to make its iced coffee, and today’s offering was from the Kochere region of Ethiopia. Normally when you order a cold-brew, the barista takes some of the coffee concentrate and cuts it with water and ice to make it the right strength for sipping. I find that as the ice melts, you lose some of the rich chocolate notes and taste more of the acidity on the margins. For some time now, I have been planning to try the concentrate without mixing it to see if the drink holds its flavors better, and today seemed like a good time to do it.

Apparently, drinking cold brew straight up is not very common, because the barista had a hard time understanding what I was ordering. Granted, I asked for it in a clumsy manner, since there is no actual name for what I wanted to try. With a little persistence, though, we made it to the same page, and he gave me a glass of the potent concoction.

Short but strong

You would expect a drink that is normally diluted by half to be quite strong, and it was. Inhaling deeply over the glass of mahogany liquid, I could smell a sweetness similar to blackstrap molasses. The richness of the drink came through in its aroma.

When coffee brewed this way hits your tongue, the first impression it gives you is that it is going to be sour or bitter, but then it mellows out quickly into a mouthful of silkiness. The Ethiopian coffee had hints of bittersweet chocolate and pink grapefruit, with a body that lingered, filling my entire mouth with a pleasant satisfaction.

Drinking iced coffee this way is a little like drinking a shot of whiskey—strong up front, with a mellow finish. If you can figure out how to order one, you will probably want to drink it slow. It is a concentrate, so the caffeine per ounce must be pretty high.  

As an everyday drink, a cold-brew “neat” might be a little strong (knock-you-on-your-a$$ strong, really). I wouldn’t order it every time I decide to drink a cold-brewed coffee, but I do foresee ordering it from time to time when I am looking for something a little different.

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Slamming espressos, Seattle style

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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

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From nuts to fruits: learning how to taste at Ristretto Roasters

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Last weekend, after stopping by Overland Park to listen to Leaves Russell perform at the Organic Brewers Festival, I made my way over to Ristretto Roasters café on North Williams Ave., to have some coffee with Jinsu Lee, a South Korean coffee aficionado who has also explored many different cafés around Portland (he provided the photos for this post). We like to get together once in a while to talk about coffee and what the future of the coffee industry might be, especially in South Korea, where specialty coffee is just beginning to take off.

When I got to the café, Jinsu was already sitting at a back table with a group of people.  He waved me over and introduced me to the group—Ryan, Rachel, Hank and Steve (all Ristretto employees) and told me that they had invited us to join them. Unknowingly, we had stumbled upon Ristretto’s weekly Sunday public coffee event.

Each Sunday afternoon at 2:30, Ristretto hosts some kind of event to help educate customers about coffee. Often these are coffee cuppings, but last Sunday’s was a little different. Instead of tasting different coffees, the plan was to taste several different foods as a way to develop and map out our palates. Steve, who is a trainer for Ristretto, led us through the exercise.

Preparing to taste. Photo courtesy Jinsu Lee

Developing a discerning palate is very important for people who work in the coffee industry (especially for coffee buyers and roasters), who need to be sure that they are producing a consistent, high-quality product. It is a skill that takes time to develop. I once heard a café owner tell a group that he and his business partner cupped coffee every single morning for three years. As you can imagine, he felt pretty confident in his ability to detect all of the subtleties and imperfections that are present in a cup of coffee.

If you have read many of my café posts, you know that I try to describe the flavors in each of the coffees. I have mentioned several times that a coffee has hints of berries in it, or some kind of citrus, chocolate or cherries. Two of the more interesting coffees I tried to describe came from Ristretto’s cafés (you can read them here and here). On coffee packages and in conversations with baristas, flavors like dates, honey, leather, tamarind, bergamot, carrots, plums and peaches have also been used. All of these descriptions are somewhat subjective, since we all taste things differently.

A more experienced coffee taster uses less subjective language and describes coffee in terms like acidity, body, sweetness and balance, breaking the coffee down into the responses they cause in our mouth.

The tasting lineup. Photo courtesy Jinsu Lee

Steve’s goal was to teach us to think about tasting in a more methodical way. As we tasted the foods, our assignment was to concentrate on how they felt and where they affected our mouths, tongues and throats. We tasted 10 different foods: almonds, hazelnuts, Brazil nuts, milk chocolate, dark chocolate, avocados, red delicious apples, Granny Smith apples, lemons and limes.

We started out with the least acidic food, the almonds, and then moved step by step toward the most acidic, the limes. Apparently, if you were to start with the limes, the acidity would overload your palate at the beginning and make it much harder to taste the other foods.

Of the three nuts, the almonds were the driest. They were a little bit sweet, affecting the front end of my tongue as I ground them up between my teeth (Speaking of grinding up the almonds, it was kind of amusing to sit there and watch everyone working the foods around their mouths, their faces reflecting a deep concentration as they tried discern all of the tastes and textures. I’m sure I had a funny look on my face too).

The hazelnuts were distinctly sweeter and had more oils in them than the almonds. The Brazil nuts had a little bit of a sandy (mineral) flavor, and were the oiliest of all, leaving a light coating on the inside of my mouth. Steve told us that the difference between the Brazil nuts and the almonds was analogous to the difference between coffees with a lot of body and those without it.

We discussed body some more as we moved into the chocolates. We started with the milk chocolate, which was very sweet and creamy. It had lots of body. The dark chocolate, in contrast, was only a little bit sweet, and it dried out my mouth as I chewed it. Our guide told us that the drying effect came from the tannins in the cocoa. He said it was like a dry wine, where the wine is fermented with the skins still on the grapes. This leaves more of the tannins in the wine, giving the wine that mouth-drying feel.

After the dark chocolate came the avocado. The avocado was another demonstration of something with a lot of body. The oils in the avocado coated our mouths as we swished the slimy fruit around inside them.

The two apples followed the avocado. This was the beginning of the acidity phase of the tasting. The light acidity of the red delicious apple is similar to (though sweeter than) some of the berry or stone fruit acidity that some coffees have. It stays more towards the front of your tongue. The Granny Smith apples are a bit more tart, so as soon as you chew them up, the acidity moves up the sides of your tongue.

When we got to the lemons, everyone prepared to pucker up. We bit enthusiastically into the chunks of raw lemon and WHAM! Faces around the table tightened up as the lemon juice hit our taste buds. The lime had a similar affect. Its acidity grabbed the middle of my tongue, then as I swallowed, it latched onto the back of my throat and lingered. The lime was so acidic that it kind of burned and almost tasted salty. Jinsu quipped that we could have used some tequila to go with it, a statement that was greeted with a nod of agreement from everyone.

After we finished tasting, we sat around for a while and talked about coffee, because that’s what coffee people do when they get together, especially after going through a tasting exercise like this one. We concluded that Portland is a great city to learn about coffee, because cafés like Ristretto are always trying to educate their customers on the finer points of the beverage.

If you are looking for something to do on a Sunday afternoon, I recommend that you stop by Ristretto and check out what they are sharing that day. You might get to try or taste something you’ve never had before, or you might just get to hang around with a bunch of coffee enthusiasts. Either way, you should have a good afternoon at one of Portland’s best cafés.

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