Unlike the last time I considered lattes, I’d say it’s now fall. There’s perhaps no season where coffee is more integral. What besides caffeine will keep you awake as days get shorter and nights elongate? What will warm you up as the weather begins to cool? What will you sip over a good book by the fire?
Fall is also a great café season. When Northwest rains threaten to dampen your spirits, your local coffee shop is dependably warm and cozy. The following are five of the cafés I’m looking forward to frequenting in the coming months. Bring it on, fall.
1) Le Marché St. George, Vancouver — Quite simply one of the most charming places to get a cup of coffee the Northwest has ever seen. A mishmash of tan and green shingles covers the café-grocery at the corner of St. George Street and E. 28th Ave. Inside you’ll find an eclectically curated yet perfectly symbiotic collection of everything from jams to pastries to handmade pottery. Take a seat on the pillow-soft couches, turn off your ringtone and let time slip away over a sour cherry tart and a noisette—the Parisian term for a small coffee with just a skosh of cream.
2) The Barn Light, Eugene, Ore. — The beauty of a bar-café combo in fall is having the option of spending the entire day there, without once going out in the elements. Open at 7am (10 on weekends) until at least midnight every night except Sunday, The Barn Light features a great variety of heterogeneous décor, serves Coava, Water Avenue and Eugene’s own J-Tea, and is designed as a place to “start your day, spend your day, and raise a toast to the end of the day.”
3) Bauhaus, Seattle — “Brilliant. And less cold than elsewhere.” So says the website of Bauhaus, which has reigned as the darling of the Capitol Hill intellectual coffee shop scene long enough for its website to still end in .net. Thanks to an overhaul of their old building, Bauhaus has a snazzy new Cap Hill space (including a balcony for hipster-watching), plus recently added offshoot shops in Ballard and Greenlake. With library reading room lamps that’d make Suzzallo proud and a tagline of Books + Coffee, you know you can’t go wrong.
4) Coffeehouse Northwest, Portland — One of two of Sterling Coffee Roasters’ locations, this shop on Burnside is my favorite of the two for fall, because there’s something innately comfortable about exposed brick walls. Oh yeah, and fantastic coffee. Spend your afternoon tasting through Sterling’s fresh daily “craft-roasted” coffees and comparing them to the sumptuous descriptors they attribute to each—“figs & molasses” for Santa Isabel Guatemala, “bergamot & pepper” for Aramo Ethiopia, and “cocoa & caramel” for Blendo Stupendo.
5) Bear Foods Café & Crêperie, Lake Chelan, Wash. — Start with deep green walls with a hand-painted forest landscape; add in red-white checkered tablecloths and red speckled enamel camping mugs; fill those with stellar local coffee; and top it all with airy crêpes stuffed with all manner of delicious fixings. The tasty meats, fancy cheeses, cured peppers, sauces, and fresh veggies as well as the bags of freshly roasted Blue Star coffee beans (roasted in nearby Twisp) all come from the Bear Foods Natural Market next door, and this little café is only reached through a doorway in the wall of that grocery. It’s very worth finding.
