Where to Find the Classic Coffee Shops That Made Seattle World Famous

There was a time (pre-Amazon, of course) when if you told someone from anywhere in the world you were from Seattle, they would grin and say, “Coffee!” And Seattle's coffee scene is truly as good as its worldwide reputation -- but not necessarily for the reasons people assume.

Seattle’s stature as a coffee town came, in large part, thanks to a little chain that opened in '71 called Starbucks. But for locals, Starbucks is the least "Seattle" of coffeeshops. It’s the coffee houses of the '60s in the U-District that started it all -- whose laid-back, home-away-from-home, art-loving vibe inspired an entire city's coffeehouse culture.

As the story goes, Seattle's first coffeehouse was Cafe Encore, opened in 1958 on the Ave, followed by contemporaries nearby, like The Place Next Door and the Last Exit. Folk musicians stopped by to play, artists displayed their work on the walls, and, in an era of Vietnam War protests, hippies, and drugs, places like these served as local gathering spots. It's that tradition of serving as community hubs for budding creatives that gives these cafes the storied feel -- be it the folk musicians of the '60s, the grunge musicians of the '90s, or today's writers, huddled over laptops.

But one thing that's always set Seattle's shops apart is that those creatives wouldn't settle for Sanka. The biggest leap in Seattle's coffee quality came when a tinkerer and sandwich shop owner named Kent Bakke started fiddling with his espresso machine. He traveled to Italy in search of a better machine and discovered the potential of delicious espresso and the machines that make it. Bakke eventually started importing La Marzocco machines to Seattle (and would later go on to be the CEO of the company).

Bakke made one sale in 1984, to a man named Howard Schultz, that changed the course of the coffee industry. Schultz, armed with the new espresso machine, switched Starbucks’ focus from roasting beans to making drinks -- and serving as a “third place” for customers, not too different from that '60s scene in the U-District. And thus, a chain was born.

There's no doubt Starbucks dominated the national conversation, but outside of it, the espresso machine revolution ran rampant. At the time, coffee's ubiquity in Seattle was more than any single shop or chain. “Everywhere was getting an espresso machine: the dry cleaner, the video store,” says Dani Cone, who owns Fuel Coffee in Seattle. Espresso, the Seattle Times pointed out in 1993, was “in parking garages, furniture stores, car washes, dental offices, life insurance, drive-thrus, fast-food joints.” It was sold from carts on the street, parked every few blocks, which was how Boeing engineer-cum-espresso expert and Espresso Vivace owner David Schomer got his start. Vivace and the shops that came after it would define an era in Seattle and Seattle coffee: places that created a comfortable, all-are-welcome environment, but were also devoted to creating the perfect cup.

“[They] were a whole subculture,” Cone remembers, aptly calling them addictive. “You never know who you’d run into, but eventually you’d see everyone.” She chalks Seattle’s coffee shop love up to the sad, grey weather pushing people inside. This was also a time when not everyone had access to a smartphone or computer, and the peak of Grunge-Era Seattle in the '90s -- a bunch of flannel-clad slackers sitting around on comfy couches sipping espresso.  

Cut to today. Shiny new shops abound, with their lighter roasts and sleek, sharp angles, but these older places -- the ones that earned the city its reputation -- have also stuck around, keeping up the quality and the culture that made them so noteworthy in the first place. They remain the kinds of places you're as likely to run into the mayor, a struggling writer, or even the next Pearl Jam in the making. We've rounded up the places that have withstood the test of time -- or descended directly from shops that did -- where you can clutch a cup where Kurt might have, slip into a scene from the '60s, or drink under the original Starbucks mermaid.

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