I’ve talked about the overlap between coffee and cocktails before – to me a high degree of inter-industry collaboration is one of the best things about the Pacific Northwest beverage scene. Recently, a particularly promising new project has stepped onto the Seattle coffee-cocktail scene.
Though bars across the Northwest – Liberty down the street from Corretto, Catch 122 in Vancouver, B.C., and Genie’s Cafe in Portland, to name a few among them – have brought us complex and compelling takes on boozy espresso before, these sorts of concoctions tend to be one-offs on much larger craft cocktail menus. Corretto, owned by the same people who opened nearby spirit-focused Rumba and Tango, specifically spotlights alcohol-augmented espresso shots: they’re first on the menu, and make up almost half the cocktail list. Indeed, Café Corretto is Italian for “coffee, corrected”: something played up on the chalkboards and the website of the new Capitol Hill establishment.
What sets Corretto apart from all the places slinging Kahlúa- and Bailey’s-soaked classics is this: rather than an instrument for imbibing booze, espresso is the star of the show. The liqueurs, chosen by Corretto’s Coffee Director, Brandon Paul Weaver (also of Slate Coffee, served at Corretto) are there to play up each roast’s complex flavors. Among them are traditional grappa (found with Giffard Banane in the Divine Comedy, and alongside Faretti in the Liquid Biscotti) and imaginative combinations of amaros and bitters in espresso hot or cold (in the Il Futurismo and delicious Creme e Creme). Or, perhaps the best bet is to pick the components you’d like to play up in your corretto and leave it to the talented baristas (which, of course, means bartenders in Italian). My corretto came rich as liquid chocolate, topped with a thick froth of cream and bittered just enough to make each sip compelling.
If you’re in Seattle, Corretto is worth a stop – hopefully as a harbinger of trends to come in the coffee-cocktail industry. || 416 Broadway East, Seattle
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