Cafe Allegro – The Secret Cafe

Cafe Allegro – Seattle’s Oldest “Secret” Cafe

Description on  Cafe Allegro’s website : Established in Seattle’s University District in 1975, Cafe Allegro is home to Seattle’s oldest espresso bar and one of the country’s finest Seattle-style coffee roasters. Our beans are imported from family farms around the world and roasted in small batches onsite at our cafe. Whether you’re a one cup a day drinker or a true Seattlite, we guarantee you’ll enjoy every sip.

Neighborhood:  University District

Address: 4214 University Way NE, Seattle, WA 98105

Music playing:

What we ate/drank: Cortado, Macchiato, Lemonade

Comments:   Café Allegro has a strange dichotomy in that it’s Seattle’s oldest coffee shop in the Coffee Capital of the World, but it’s also “hidden” in an alley which makes it difficult for those “not-in-the-know” to find it.  With Café Allegro being the oldest coffee shop in Seattle, you’d think it would be a really popular place among visitors, but from our perspective it’s only popular among UW students.  When asking locals about their favorite coffee shops, we rarely here Café Allegro mentioned. I think it’s due to a few reasons. Number one, it’s hidden in an alley right off The Ave(University Ave) between NE 42^nd and NE 43^rd Ave, so it’s hard to find. Number two, it’s in the University District, which is popular among U-Dub students, but not the rest of the Seattle general population. Number three, people who know about Café Allegro and have gotten a cup to go, don’t know it has tons of space, so they dismiss it as too crowded/too small. I, myself, didn’t know how big it was when I first came here.  I thought Café Allegro was comprised of just the area in which you order, which fits maybe 25 people and always packed.  Some infrequent visitors, may know that there’s an adjacent seating area through a narrow walk way near the barista counter that has some individual tables, booth seating and additional counter seating. But unless you are a frequent visitor, you may not know there is also an upstairs room with seating for at least an additional 30 people and a patio that has 3 benches and a few individual seating. The upstairs portion is relatively new(from 2015?) and not accessible from the café. You have to go outside and then enter a separate door for the upstairs portion. So there are “hidden” rooms/patio within this “hidden” café.  This floor also houses their roaster.   In totality, if I had to guess, Cafe Allegro could seat at least 80 people conservatively.

Café Allegro was established in 1975 and is located within a building built in 1909. Previous iterations of the space were a bank and funeral home/mortuary. I love that there really is no signage except for a beaten down hanging sign in which you can barely make out “Café Allegro est. 1975”. When you first enter Café Allegro you get a sense it’s part of the community because of their huge ever changing wall of Seattle event posters. Exposed brick walls and worn wood counters give you a sense of its history. They also have a wall of framed foreign currencies that always seems to catch the eye of new visitors I bring here.  The aforementioned additional rooms are very nondescript, but the tables with burlap coffee sacks under glass as table tops is a nice touch.

As mentioned in our Best Seattle Bars To Impress Out of Towners,  Our Seattle Coffee Shop Thoughts and Seven Coffee Roasters posts, Seattle visitors love these little hidden gems. Places they would never find without the help of a local. The latest visitors we took here were a family from Sweden. They were visiting mutual friends in Kent, WA and wanted to meet up. We suggested meeting at the University Farmers Market on a Saturday and after strolling the market, they mentioned they would love a cup of coffee. I suggested Café Allegro. Even my friend from Kent, WA who graduated from UW had never been to Café Allegro. As we walked down the alley, I started getting strange looks, but as soon as they entered, they said, “How cool!” and got out their phones and started taking pictures. Of course, the main café seating area was packed, but I mentioned the upstairs and lo and behold, we went up there and had the whole floor to ourselves. We had a group of 7 adults and one 2 year old who did not want to sit still, so this was a perfect area for us.  The Swedish visitors said, “We feel like this is a very local place. We would have never have found it. That’s the advantage of having a local show you around”.  They had also read about Molly Moon Ice Cream on the airplane magazine and wanted to go, but we told them we’d take them to another less known, less crowded place in walking distance from Cafe Allegro. We took them to Sweet Alchemy Ice Creamery less than a block away and they loved it. We told them to go to Molly Moon also, because it’s good, but asked them for their opinion after they tried both and take into consideration the wait time and hype and tell us which is better. Of course, Sweet Alchemy.

Café Allegro actually has it’s own Wikipedia page which tells more about its history and its founder who was instrumental in a fledgling company, called Starbucks.

The food options are mainly pastries, which were from Marsee Bakery. They also have teas and cold drinks. The signage also says they have beer and wine, but didn’t see any displayed and why would you have beer and wine at the oldest coffee shop in Seattle anyways? You come for coffee. From their website you can buy individual bags of beans and bean subscriptions.

Warning: The beans sold by Café Allegro are not the same beans you see in Whole Foods, which are their in house brand, Allegro Coffee. It can be quite confusing.

Ratings(1-5)Favorite Thing: The “secret” aspect of Seattle’s oldest coffee shop.

Atmosphere:   5 + 1(extra for ample seating and ambiance)

Service:  4.75

Food Options:   4.00

Overall:   4.75

Eavedropping  Convo:   None, except for the comments from our Swedish guests we took here. In place of Eavesdropping Convo, I’ll place this video about Cafe Allegro.