The Seattle Coffee Shop Awards – Part 4

As you know Seattleites have the stereotype of being coffee drinking fools. This is no stereotype, we take our coffee seriously. And if you ask 20 different locals what their favorite coffee place is, you’ll most likely get 20 different answers.

These are our choices for Best Seattle Coffee Shop Awards. With two young’uns, we’ve had to trade in our frequency of night life in Seattle bars and pubs to morning life in a lot of Seattle coffee cafes.

In doing so, we’ve gotten to revisit a lot of coffee shops we hadn’t been to in a while and also got a chance to visit a lot of new places that had always been on our radar but never been able to go to.  We Seattleites are so lucky to have so many varieties of roasters and cafes in such a condensed area.

You’ll notice in our Coffee Shop blog posts we rarely mention how good the coffee is in each place, because we feel like it’s a given we’re going to get exceptional coffee.  If we happen upon a coffee shop in which the coffee is not good, we will not review it. This might be the reason you may not see a particular coffee shop on our blog.

Part 1 – Best Coffee Neighborhood, Most Popular, Most Underrated
Part 2 – Best Coffee Shops for Groups or You Want To Be Alone.
Part 3 – Best Seattle Coffee Drink Sets, Best Views
Part 5 – Best Seattle Coffee Shops for Food Options, Friendliest Service 
Part 6 – Seattle Coffee With Most Character, Best Seattle Coffee Shops Overall.

Best Seattle Coffee Shops to Impress Visitors

We tried to pick cafes that are close to Seattle’s main attractions, but have really nice ambiance and atmosphere and would make any visitors Seattle coffee experience memorable. We wouldn’t mind taking our visiting parents or high school age nephews/nieces, because we think they’d feel comfortable in these cafes.

1. Storyville Coffee in Pike Place Market – Secret place in Pike Place Market.
2. La Marzocco Cafe – Located in the Seattle Center.
3. Cherry Street Public House – In Pioneer Square near Occidental Park
4. Mr West Café Bar– Wow, I want to hang out here.
5. Café Allegro– Oldest cafe in Seattle and hidden in an alley

The number one spot(for now) goes to Storyville Coffee in Pike Place Market. It’s located in the number one attraction in Seattle and although the first Starbucks is also located here, we usually take our visitors to Storyville Coffee.  It’s hidden from the crowds, it’s a very cozy and has an inviting atmosphere and the view of the market and Puget Sound can’t be beat.

The number two spot goes to La Marzocco Café.  It’s in the major tourist attraction, the Seattle Center, so you’ll most likely end up near the café anyways. The Seattle Center includes the Space Needle, International Fountain, Chihuly Garden & Glass, Museum of Pop Culture, Pacific Science Center and the Seattle Children’s Museum. La Marzocco Café is a huge café that shares space with Seattle radio station, KEXP.  It has a rotating coffee roaster that keeps things fresh, so multiple trips throughout the year will bring different experiences. This historic espresso machine maker was founded in 1884 and this is their only café in the world!  Visiting here is like visiting a museum with their various espresso machine iterations.

Pioneer Square is another destination for visitor. It’s the oldest neighborhood in Seattle and the architecture of the buildings in the area showcase this. Right on the main walking thoroughfare of Occidental is the Cherry Street Public House. It’s bright and big and not only can you enjoy a coffee there, but they have alcohol and serve food there too. It’s a newer construction so the place is modern and well thought out. The owner actually won the US Barista Championship in 2014. Baller.

Mr West Café Bar is near the main shopping area in downtown and always impresses with their service, the décor, the seating arrangements(bar, window counter, patio, comfy chairs or separate tables) and atmosphere.  They have a good selection of food as well as alcoholic beverages. I don’t know how to explain it, but it’s just a place you want to hang out.

Café Allegro is near UDUB(University of Washington). It’s the oldest café in Seattle and also has the “secret hidden” café thing going for it that visitors seem to love.  Although there are throngs of students normally there, it’s a very big place with an adjacent seating section and an entire 2nd floor with a patio if the main café area is crowded.

Best Seattle Coffee Shops to Impress Visiting Coffee Snobs

So the previous award for Best Seattle Coffee Shop to Impress Visitors were for general visitors who want a nice café close to various Seattle attractions, enjoy the atmosphere/décor and want a good cup of coffee.   The places listed below are for the visitors to Seattle who are coffee snobs and who say things like, “I keep hearing that Seattle is the Center of Coffee Universe and the coffee is all that. Well, prove it to me!”  Location, café décor, service quality and atmosphere are all secondary. They want to be impressed by the coffee.  This is where you should take them:

1. Slate Coffee Roasters
2. Elm Coffee Roasters
3. Broadcast Coffee
4. Milstead & Co.
5. Ghost Note Coffee

When we walk into these places, it just feels like they take their coffee game seriously. They all have that minimalist vibe to their cafes and we’d like to think it’s because they want you to really concentrate on their coffee with a minimum amount of sensory distraction. We have three roasters, one multiroaster and one coffee shop that makes coffee concoctions like a mad scientist.

Slate Coffee Roaster has three locations around Seattle-Near UW, Capitol Hill and one in Ballard. It’s home to the Deconstructed Latte, which is a good way to not only learn about the coffee, but also about the dairy they use in their drinks. They seem to really care about the experience of drinking their coffee and are enthusiastic about telling you all about it. I genuinely felt like I was in a Coffee 101 class.

Elm Coffee Roasters located in Pioneer Square does their roasting right on the premises, so you know it’s fresh. Roasting is done on Tues, Thurs and Sundays. You can get one of their combos here, the One of Everything, which gives you a chance to have a Macchiato, espresso and a brewed coffee. You’ve got their roasters mere yards away from where you’re drinking their coffee. What coffee snob, wouldn’t be impressed by that?

The Broadcast Coffee in Roosevelt is my personal favorite place to work on my laptop. And are they serious about their coffee? You can read our Broadcast Coffee blog post when the barista made my espresso three times because she wasn’t happy with the quality. Somebody left the door open, which she believes altered the pressure in the café that affected the espresso.

Milstead & Co are known nation-wide as a top notch multiroaster.  They employ two La Marzocco espresso machines to keep things moving along and a rotation of featured coffee roasters to keep things fresh. You want to brag to your coffee snob visitor? You can tell them that Food & Wine rated Milstead & Co a perfect 5 out of 5 on the Coffee Snob Factor for Seattle cafes. To give you an idea, Slate only got a 3.

Ghost Note has a custom built espresso machine that with the push of a button attempts to replicate the characteristics of a pour over in only 90 seconds.  That would impress the coffee snob in all of us, but they go a step further and serve their coffee in fancy glasses and have very progressive concoctions you might imagine that a coffee mad scientist created. For example, Sun Ship- Espresso, smoked grapefruit rosemary syrup, coconut water, sparkling water, lime. Cold.   The menu notes…..”alterations politely declined”  <<<

Elm Coffee Roasters

Best Seattle Coffee Shops to Make Visitors Feel Like Locals

The Best Seattle Coffee Shop to Impress Visitors Award was for general visitors near Seattle attractions. The second was for serious Coffee Snob Visitors. This one is for the visitor who perhaps has already been to all the Seattle attractions and just came to Seattle to visit us and just wants to relax and chill and catch up. They want to see what a normal day looks like as a regular Seattleite and where we might spend time drinking coffee in our normal life. These are the type of coffee shops that we enjoy taking visitors to the most. In a lot of ways, these places feel like an extension of our home.

• They are typically in the middle of neighborhoods off of main streets(Preserve & Gather, Analog Coffee, Lighthouse Roasters, Seven Coffee Roasters)
• You find that most people that frequent these spots are walking in from the neighborhood. No dedicated parking spaces for any of these places.
• You get the feeling there’s a real sense of community. It was not unusual to see multiple families with kids here. It was common for baristas greeting visitors by their first name and ringing them up without asking for their order, because they already knew it by heart.
• It felt comfortable to leisurely enjoy our drinks over conversation without being hurried.
• Most importantly, these places were vibrant and alive and not like a library full of zombies working on laptops in total silence.

1. Analog Coffee
2. Lighthouse Roasters
3. Seven Coffee Roasters
4. Zoka Coffee Roasters – Tangletown
5. l Diablo Coffee(RIP)
6. Preserve & Gather

Analog Coffee, Lighthouse Roasters and Seven Coffee Roaster all have that “neighborhood general store” vibe and are all right in the middle of neighborhood on side streets. Analog has that “stay a while” vibe with it’s newspaper and magazines available for your reading pleasure clipped against the walls, ample seats both outside and inside and the barista part-timing as a DJ on their turntable. We also can’t forget about their stack of comic books. You could be there all day.

In our original Lighthouse Roasters review, we mentioned how our time there felt like a scene out of the movie, Doc Hollywood(small town feel).  You could tell it was part of people’s daily routine to come here for their coffee-the baristas greeted the customers by name, customers recognized other customers and proceeded to small talk, and so many people were there reading newspapers just passing the time.

Seven Coffee Roaster has that “general store” vibe because it really is a general store, but they also happen to be a coffee roaster. This really is one of the hidden gems in Seattle. There place is really small, but they do have an outdoor bench in front of the store and an attached patio. Because it’s a general store, we can enjoy our coffee, while we can get snacks or ice cream for our kids. Everybody’s happy!

Zoka Coffee Roasters in Tangletown has been around for as long as I can remember and they definitely have a loyal following. Although the space is huge by Seattle coffee shop standards, it’s always crowded. It’s pretty much the only coffee shop in this neighborhood which might explain it. This is one place that can get overrun with students and laptops, but the crowd and seating arrangements make it a prime spot for neighbors to just hang out.

El Diablo is another neighborhood gem up on Queen Anne Hill.  There is a plethora of coffee shop on the hill, but this one stands out for it’s unique quality of being in a house. The space is one of the biggest in Seattle and for us parents, the dedicated room for kids is a god send. It also has two patios one in the front and one on the second floor balcony. Yes, there is a whole second floor! It’s a perfect place for big gatherings(It won our Award for Top Coffee Shop for Groups). Perhaps it’s the quality of being in a house, that makes you feel your getting a local’s experience.

The last place is Preserve and Gather. We liked everything about this place-the fact that they made all their pastries in house, the numerous and varied types of seating, the general décor, how much pride the workers seemed to have in keeping the space clean and of course, the community feel.  I believe it garnered one of our highest rating scores with a 4.9 out of 5.0. I have no idea the origin of the name, but we’d like to think they are “preserving” the act of getting together and catching up over coffee and are offering their space to “gather”. Clever, huh?

See our other installments of Seattle Coffee Shop Awards:

Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Seattle Coffee Shops
Part 1 – Best Coffee Neighborhood, Most Popular, Most Underrated
Part 2 – Best Coffee Shops for Groups or You Want To Be Alone.
Part 3 – Best Seattle Coffee Drink Sets, Best Views
Part 5 – Best Seattle Coffee Shops for Food Options, Friendliest Service 
Part 6 – Seattle Coffee With Most Character, Best Seattle Coffee Shops Overall.