106. Backspace
City: Portland, OR
Category: Restaurants
Telephone: (503) 248-2900
Description: Backspace is a great coffeeshop that aspires to be a “third place”—a home away from home, where you can hang out, drink coffee (or beer), play pool, do some work, look at cool art, or maybe hear a show. Its Old Town location, near the MAX line, is convenient and central. But one of the biggest attractions is the networked gaming room, which provides ten terminals where you can settle in with your coffee and play solo or with friends. If you go when there’s a band, you’ll need to pay the cover.
107. Barista
City: Portland, OR
Category: Restaurants
Telephone: (503) 274-1211
Address: 539 Northwest 13th Ave.
Insider Pick:
Description: Barista was founded by award-winning barista Billy Wilson, and at this urbane shop in Northwest Portland, you can sample different roasts much the way you would sample different wines. This means that local microroasts are served alongside Stumptown, with profiles of each kind listed—because not all espressos are alike. While Barista won’t tell you how to drink your coffee, the purity of coffee flavor is the focus, so you may want to save your butterscotch latte for another place and just enjoy the rich espresso pulls. They warn you not to call, but we’ve listed the phone number anyway. They also have a shop at 1725 Northeast Alberta St. Barista is open from 7 a.m. to 6 p.m.
108. Coffeehouse Northwest
City: Portland, OR
Category: Restaurants
Telephone: (503) 248-2133
Address: 1951 West Burnside St.
Insider Pick:
Description: The star feature of this attractive space on West Burnside is the espresso. It’s drawn from perfectly roasted Stumptown beans at the perfect time to grind (several days out of the roaster) and it’s drawn ristretto-style, which means the first pulse out of the machine. This attention to quality has earned Coffeehouse Northwest loyal customers and many accolades. The location, on trafficky Burnside, is challenging, but the focus on making perfect coffee has allowed them to overcome this challenge. They make amazing hot chocolate as well, and serve excellent pastries, but truly, this is a coffee geek’s paradise.
109. Ken’S Artisan Bakery
City: Portland, OR
Category: Restaurants
Telephone: (503) 248-2202
Address: 326 Northwest 21st Ave.
Description: So it’s not strictly coffee, but this excellent French-style patisserie and bakery is one of the best places on the Westside to have coffee, or really one of the best places anywhere. Ken Forkish is one of the most important bakers in town, supplying many restaurants, and his pastries are outstanding—perfectly flaky and balanced but never heavy or greasy. Try to go in the morning, when they are freshest. You’ll find a line, but the efficient people behind the counter will move you through quickly. The coffee is also very good, and there are many tables so you can read the paper and drink your coffee while you dissect your croissant.
110. Kobos Company
City: Portland, OR
Category: Restaurants
Telephone: (503) 222-2302
Address: 2355 Northwest Vaughn St.
Description: Kobos was a pioneer of coffee roasting, setting up retail roasting in 1973 and serving espresso beginning in 1981. This major roaster features specialty coffees, wonderful pastries, and a lot more. Teas, herbs and spices, chocolates and Torani syrups, and cooking utensils from around the world are temptingly displayed at their stores. They also sell gourmet kitchen utensils and supplies. And you can buy their delicious coffee
111. Pearl Bakery
City: Portland, OR
Category: Restaurants
Telephone: (503) 827-0910
Address: 102 Northwest 9th Ave.
Description: Set on a busy street corner, this shop has two full windows lined with counters, stools, and small tables and chairs. The open atmosphere is great for those overcast days when we need every sunbeam we can get. Coffee and espresso or a good selection of fragrant teas are just the things to accompany the exceptional sandwiches, desserts, and breakfast pastries. See the Restaurant chapter for more information.
112. Café Pallino
City: Portland, OR
Category: Restaurants
Telephone: (503) 232-0907
Address: 3003 Southeast Division
Description: Café Pallino is a beautiful Italian-modern cafe that specializes in coffee, pastries, breakfasts, and panini—and gelato. The gelato is house-made and it is as good as anything you will find in Italy. The cafe is also excellent for groups—there are white leather couches and long, long tables, all designed for maximum conversation. But there are also nice smaller tables if you want to hunker down with your laptop and finish writing your blog post for the day. Which you can do, because there’s also free Wi-Fi. A good hangout spot.
113. Common Grounds
City: Portland, OR
Category: Restaurants
Telephone: (503) 236-4835
Address: 4321 Southeast Hawthorne Blvd.
Description: This coffeehouse, on the eastern side of the Hawthorne shopping district, is both a neighborhood draw and a destination point, one of the best places in the city to read and write with your latte. Graduate students, artists, and writers flock to the place. They stock a good selection of periodicals, from the New York Review of Books to Wired, and the music is always good. Common Grounds also serves wonderful food to help fire up the neurons. Great cookies, pastries, and other desserts are made right there, and the panini will keep you going.
114. Floyd’S Coffeeshop
City: Portland, OR
Category: Restaurants
Telephone: (503) 230-2167
Address: 1412 Southeast Morrison St.
Description: This bright, shiny little coffeeshop in the Buckman neighborhood serves great pastries and strong coffee with lots of friendliness. We like it not only because of the hand-pulled Stumptown shots but also because there are many outlets—one pretty much for every seat—for when your laptop battery is running low. Look for good tunes, comfortable seats for working: you can get a lot of work done here.
115. The Pied Cow Coffeehouse
City: Portland, OR
Category: Restaurants
Telephone: (503) 230-4866
Address: 3244 Southeast Belmont St.
Description: The Pied Cow is in an old Victorian home that looks like a cheerfully haunted house. Inside it is decorated with brass chandeliers and big comfortable sofas and pillows. It has an inviting porch and an outside dining area that is packed all year long, since it’s heated. This coffeehouse has evolved from hippie to hipster, with the addition of a popular hookah bar, which draws avant-garde smokers from all over town. It’s also open late. You can bring the children, but you may be spending a lot of time explaining things.
116. Rimsky Korsakoffee House
City: Portland, OR
Category: Restaurants
Telephone: (503) 232-2640
Address: 707 Southeast 12th Ave.
Description: One of the most unique stops in the city, Rimsky Korsakoffee House offers a wide range of specialty coffees, desserts, and live classical music. Open evenings only: 7 p.m. to midnight during the week and 7 p.m. to 1 a.m. on Fri and Sat.
117. Southeast Grind
City: Portland, OR
Category: Restaurants
Telephone: (503) 473-8703
Address: 1223 Southeast Powell Blvd.
Description: The Southeast Grind is one of the very, very few coffee shops in Portland that is open 24 hours, seven days each week. This shop is important to know is not only because it is open 24 hours in a row, but it also makes free Wi-Fi available so you can put your caffeinated rush to good use on the Internet. The atmosphere is pine-lodge rustic, and they have a fireplace. They offer doughtnuts, sandwiches, and other treats in addition to their coffee.
City: Portland, OR
Category: Restaurants
Address: 4525 Southeast Division St.
119. Tiny’S
City: Portland, OR
Category: Restaurants
Telephone: (503) 236-2454
Address: 1412 Southeast 12th Ave.
Description: Tiny’s is a cool coffeehouse at the intersection of Southeast 12th Avenue and Hawthorne Boulevard. It serves excellent coffee and VooDoo doughnuts to dunk in it, and it’s the kind of old-school place where you can hang out for an hour or two. Tiny’s serves delicious sandwiches and provides Internet access as well. They are open early and late—6 a.m. to 10 p.m. every day and night.
120. Albina Press
City: Portland, OR
Category: Restaurants
Telephone: (503) 282-5214
Address: 4637 North Albina Ave.
Description: Albina Press is not only justly famous for their delicious coffee, but also for their barista expertise: they hire only the best, the kind that place highly in National Barista championships. The attention to the coffee combined with the capacious feeling of the space makes this an irresistible cafe for writing, reading, or just chatting for an hour or two or six.