A Guide to Great Portland Coffee Portland has a collective passion about coffee that’s borderline obsessive. It’s easy to find beans freshly roasted to your tastes here, as well as that velvety ambrosia known as a properly made cappuccino. While we won’t claim Portland is the top coffee city in the world, or the U.S. – Read more…
A Coffeehouse Guide for Portland Oregon
This is a Portland coffeehouse guide to some of our favorite places in Portland. You'll find descriptions of the shops, an overview of their coffee, and interviews with coffeehouse owners and roasters. We've also added a handy map, so you can find our recommendations for some of the best coffee near you. This is not meant to be a definitive list of coffeehouses, just some of our favorites in the Portland area. We will add more as new favorites develop.
Coffee Guide: Either/Or
Either/Or Coffeehouse brings a whole new level of creativity to Portland coffee When I was a kid, I spent a lot of time at Either/Or Books in Hermosa Beach, California. For sentimental reasons, I drove over to Either/Or coffeehouse in Sellwood to check it out. I’m not sure if the name is based on Kierkegaard’s book, but – Read more…
Coffee Guide: Café Velo
Coffee and Bicycling are close cultural twins in Portland. The city has a reputation near and far for being an epicenter of both. Add to this equation Portland’s passion for food carts, and Café Velo appears to be the natural evolution in the Portland coffee scene. What started as a single pedal-powered coffee cart in 2008, – Read more…
Coffee Guide: Water Avenue
A newcomer on the Portland coffee scene, Water Avenue Coffee started as a pop-up shop named Temporary Coffee during construction of their permanent space in 2009. They officially opened in 2010, in the up and coming Central Eastside Industrial District, on, you guessed it, SE Water Avenue, next to Clive Coffee in a complex that – Read more…
Coffee Guide: Spella Caffe
Spella Caffe has their own unique rhythm in Portland’s crowded café world. If there’s any proof that Portland roasters and cafes are highly individualized, then Spella is it. Master Roaster and owner Andrea Spella has been in the coffee business for decades, but has a different approach to café ownership, design and roasting than his – Read more…
Coffee Guide: Stumptown Coffee Roasters
Some companies are game changers. Not just in their cities or industries, but in changing the overall culture. In the coffee industry, Starbucks is the obvious one. But so is Stumptown, and as Portland’s most powerful, “world dominating” roaster of all time, it brings out more heated debate, love, disdain and yes, admiration than any – Read more…
Coffee Guide: Red E Café
Located in a retail pocket in North Portland near an I-5 freeway exit and Portland Community College, Red E Café can be easy to miss. But it’s worth the hunt, as an example of how simple but thoughtful execution can create an exceptional neighborhood café and in-house roaster worthy of national notice. Indeed, Red E has – Read more…
Coffee Guide: Ristretto Roasters
Din Johnson is a risk taker. When Ristretto Roasters first opened in late 2005, in a tiny slice of a spot on very un-hip NE 42nd Ave near Fremont St, there were whispers of, “Who are these outsiders who aren’t from the Portland coffee scene? They’ll never make it in THAT location. They are insane – Read more…