Third Culture Coffee
Description on Third Culture Coffee website : It is our attempt to transcend borders, bring together the tradition and history of cultures with the allure and mystique of coffee, tea and wine.
Neighborhood: Bellevue (Gasp!)
Address:80 102nd Ave NE, Bellevue, WA 98004
Music playing: Quiet by EXES
What we ate/drank: Atalia – A set of espresso, americano and macchiato. Vanilla cronut
Comments: We don’t go to the “Eastside” very often. For you out-of-towners, Seattle is on west side of Lake Washington. The east side of Lake Washington includes Bellevue, Kirkland, Redmond, Issaquah, Sammamish. There’s a saying here locally that you live in Seattle when you’re young and move to the Eastside when you start a family. It’s much more suburban, has quality schools and is much safer. It’s newer, cleaner, brand name hungrier than Seattle. In reality, Bellevue is less than 10 miles away, but the Eastside seems so far in proximity(and lifestyle) when we have everything we need here in old, grimey Seattle. I even disqualified any ramen places on the Eastside for being too far to travel to in our Battle of Seattle Ramen post. Anyways, we’re taking our chances and choosing to raise our two daughters here in Seattle.
Anyways, that’s a primer for our review of Third Culture Coffee in Bellevue. It’s probably been a good 4 years since we’ve been to Bellevue, but we had a visitor staying at Hyatt House that we met up with for brunch. We had some time to kill prior to our breakfast, so we went to Bellevue Downtown Park. This is a beautiful park and if you want to see the difference between Eastside and Seattle, take a look at the playground at Bellevue Downtown Park. Our jaws dropped when seeing the various play areas and fun things for kids to do, especially the water area. And here we thought that the wading pool at Greenlake where they put two inches of stagnant water in a sloped concrete area was Da Bomb! Anyways, back on topic. We noticed Third Culture Coffee across the street so popped in.
In Bellevue the buildings are newer, so there’s not the space restrictions that you might have in some of the Seattle areas like Pioneer Square, downtown or Capitol Hill. Third Culture Coffee can seat at least 40+. Plenty of counter seating, lots of individual tables for four, a few tables for two, a community table for at least 8, sidewalk seating and a seating area with leather chairs and a coffee table. There are a couple features that indicates how big this place is-a dedicated kids area and a huge swing. Can you imagine a swing being in Victrola Coffee Roasters, Caffe Ladro or Herkimer Coffee? It would take up the entire cafe. Huge windows make it bright and tall ceilings make it feel expansive. We were able to find street parking near by, but they do offer parking validation in the building parking for 1 hour before 4:00pm and 2 hours after 4:00pm.
They also serve wine, beers, ports, sherry and cocktails and have occasional events in the evening such as live music, wine tasting and wine/chocolate pairings. They also have a big tea selection. Food selections when we went were pastries, desserts and toasts including the Seattle millennial staple, avocado toast.
We ended up getting the Alitalia, which is very similar to Elm Coffee Roaster’s One of Everything. The Alitalia is a an espresso, americano and a macchiato. We also got a vanilla cronut, which is like a churo donut with vanilla filing. I know they source from Macrina Bakery, but I don’t think it was from there. The cronut was damn good with coffee.
The concept I found most intriguing that I’ve not seen anywhere else is the coffee preparation from various different cultures. There’s an Indian Filter Coffee and a Tumeric Latte(Haldi Doodh), Vietnamese prepared via phin, a Spanish Bombon, a Japanese iced pour over and a New Orleans Iced Coffee that include chicory. They even have a kids drink called the Babychino. I like trying various types of coffee drinks from around world, so it’s nice to be able to try them in one spot. Normally if you want a Vietnamese style coffee drink, you have to go to a Vietnamese restaurant. If you want a Turkish coffee, you have to go to a Turkish restaurant. There’s the other side of the coin though that if you’re a jack of all trades, you’re a master of none. So will the drinks really be a true representation of each culture if each process has to be mastered by each worker? I admire the attempt though and would love if a Seattle café would try this concept. Cheers.
Ratings(1-5)
Favorite Thing: The different cultural variations of coffee preparations
Atmosphere: 5
Service: 4.75
Food Options: 4.25
Overall: 4.65
Eavedropping Convo: No convos to report, but I noticed something peculiar. When we were at the park and decided to look for a coffee place in the near vicinity, I looked on yelp. Third Culture Coffee came up and I decided to read a couple of the reviews before going there. I noticed a couple of comments that I was surprised about. They were complaining about having to bus their own dishes/cups. This is standard practice for coffee places in Seattle. You order, get your drink/food, when done you bus your dishes/cups to a bin. This is supposed to keep costs down because it’s one less task that a worker has to do and so less workers need to be hired. Is this not a thing in Bellevue? Bussing your own dishes/cups?
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