For all its countless contributions to American and international coffee culture over the course of the last half-century, Seattle has only spawned one signature coffee drink.
The Caffè Medici was invented by Irv Cisski, owner of now defunct The Last Exit on Brooklyn, which in turn was nearly synonymous with the early Seattle coffee scene. Cisski himself was a true character whose offbeat personality provided a hub around which the Last Exit’s unique coffeehouse culture developed and orbited.
The Last Exit opened in the University District in 1967, at a time when espresso was nearly unheard of in the city, and across the country. While the café’s original menu only included drip coffee, an espresso machine was installed in 1969—as one patron, unidentified, has described it, a “huge, classic, temperamental lever-pull machine,” which was later replaced with something “a little more modern and slightly less liable to explode.”
Cisski’s menu selections were already imaginative, from a mess of a massive peanut butter and jelly sandwich to an “seasonal” asparagus tip sandwich. When Cisski’s imagination coupled with cutting-edge espresso capabilities, the results were creative and crowd-pleasing. According to the aforementioned patron, Cisski’s best were “a quasi-espresso item expositorily named an ‘espresso float,’ which was made by pouring a shot of espresso into a coke glass, then adding Hersheys syrup, then ice cream, then more chocolate syrup,” and the famed Medici: “a wonderfully indulgent concoction Irv called a Caffè Medici, whose ingredients included chocolate, whipped cream, and fresh orange peel.”
The Last Exit gained international recognition as a countercultural and espresso icon alike, but would peter out after Cisski died in 1992, eventually shuttering in 2000. Caffè Medici didn’t die with it. The drink had spread to other Seattle establishments, especially others in the University District. Jack Kelly, owner of Uptown Espresso and Caffe Ladro, (both with multiple establishments in and around Seattle), learned to make the drink at Seattle’s University District’s Espresso Express in 1986. “It was a pretty good spot in its day,” says Kelly of Espresso Express, which was his first coffee job, and which closed its doors last year after nearly 30 years in business. “Well-pulled shots on a La Marzocco [espresso machine].”
When Kelly opened Uptown Espresso, he took the drink with him. “Uptown had a crowd from a local T-shirt company come in called Generra and they ended up naming it Caffe Generra because they all ordered it,” Sheree Gibson says, Caffe Ladro’s Director of Retail Operations. “When Jack started Caffe Ladro he included it in our menu obviously and it’s been a part of our menu since 1994 as the Medici.” The Medici has become known as Ladro’s signature drink, though other Seattle establishments including Caffè Fiore serve it as well.
Though some cafes substitute candied orange peel for fresh, or don’t include the whipped cream, or use real chocolate in the place of syrup, Caffè Medici can be found on any comprehensive compilation of espresso drinks, and is served across the country, from Crossroads Café in San Francisco, to High Point Café in Philadelphia, to Emerald City Coffee in Chicago.
