Tale of Two Cities

Saturday was an unexpected surprise in many ways. We woke up and went straight for (you guessed it) coffee at a place called Good Coffee. They serve their espresso drinks in small glasses instead of mugs, which was kind of fun and very delicious. I had a special drink called a cortado, which is a Spanish espresso drink served with steamed milk and sugar. Nadene had a latté and we also ordered a scone and banana walnut muffin. Everything here was quite good and the barista was also another Colorado native! She went to CSU and lived in Boulder for awhile. That's two CO representatives in the Portland coffee business we've met so far! 

We woke up a little late on Saturday and had to rush to get coffe at Good Coffee before our scheduled roastery tour at Stumptown Coffee Roasters. You may remember them from a previous blog posting involving cold brewed nitro coffee. We were so excited to tour this place and try some more of their coffees.

Stumptown has multiple locations throughout Portland, but we ended up going to a place they call the Annex, which is essentially where they roast their coffee with a small coffee bar for tastings which they do every day at 3:00pm as a free service for the public. They invite anyone who wants to come taste their coffee to the Annex for discussion about coffee. It's sort of like a wine tasting, but with coffee. This place was really nice and a lot of fun. We started at the coffee bar with our tour guide and sampled 3 coffees he had just brewed. They were all really good and he gave us the history behind each one. Stumptown buys their coffee through what they call "direct trade" instead of fair trade - this means that they work with the coffee farmers directly and there is less money exchanging hands before the farmers and coffee pickers are paid. This allows the workers to gain more money for their hard work and creates a relationship between the farmers and Stumptown. 

After the tastings, we traveled through the building to the training room where each employee in their coffee shops goes to learn how to make their coffee consistent every time. Even the employees at businesses where Stumptown sells their coffee such as restaurants, other coffee shops, hotels, etc. has to go through training in this building to make sure the product is perfect every time. I would love to just spend days here and make all kinds of coffee!

We then went to the roasting room, where we met a guy who walked us through the roasting process. As the coffee roasted, he would pull some out every now and then to let the tour group smell the beans and look at the color. He roasted for about 15 minutes and you could smell and see the difference each time he pulled out a sample.

After learning about roasting, we were taken into the cupping room where each roast is carefully tasted by professionals to make sure that the coffees have the desired quality before sending them out to be packaged and sold. The whole process was really interesting and fun, and by the time we were done with the tour, the roaster had bagged up 1/2 pound bags of the very beans we saw him roasting and everyone got a free bag! We cannot wait to get home and try this stuff!

The tour was a lot of fun and we went from there to grab some lunch at Bunk Sandwiches, which has been on the Food Network. If you read our last road trip blog about Canada, you know that we love the Food Network and we go to places that have been featured there any time we get a chance. This place had a great Cubano sandwich and roast beef sandwich that we had been told were the reason to go. Sure enough, they were both incredible and made the perfect send off for us to travel north to Seattle for the rest of the day!

We hadn't really planned to go to Seattle due to our limitation on time, but we figured we were so close we had to make at least a quick stop so we spent Saturday afternoon and night there. We took I-5 up to the city and our first stop was the popular Pike Place Market by the bay. It was SO crowded here but ended up being really fun. All the seafood vendors had their fish and shellfish out on display and we stopped in little shops along the way. 

We made our way to a restaurant called Lowell's which overlooks the Elliott Bay just to the west. It was a beautiful view and we dined on crab cakes, salmon, and shrimp. 

Needing something sweet to finish off the night we headed downtown to a place called RN74 because it's the only place we could find with beignets, which Nadene was really craving for some reason. I'm so glad she was because this place had some of the best we've had. They were served with a salted caramel sauce with a 12 year Macallan butterscotch sauce on the bottom. So good! Perfectly chewy and sweet. Once the beignets were gone we just ate the sauce by the spoonful, it was that good!

You can tell I was pretty excited about these...

After desert, we figured we'd do one more cup of coffee to end the night since we drove all this way. Victrolla Coffee Roasters is supposed to be one of the best in the city, so that's exactly where we headed. This place has a really neat atmosphere with seats by the windows so you can look out at the city. The drip coffee here is only made by French press, which is exactly the way we like it! 

This was our final stop before we headed to our Seattle hotel and called it a day. We packed a lot in today, but the coffee rush is not over yet. Until next time, cheers!

Caleb & Nadene