Planning an Epic Coffee Tour in Portland, OR

Once in a while my work takes me to Portland, Oregon, considered a coffee mecca by many (although Kansas City has nothing to be ashamed about when it comes to the java). Inconveniently, my 40+ hour per week job keeps me from being able to tack on a day or two of fun when I travel to teach postgraduate seminars, most of the time, so I am usually left with a very small window of time where I can squeeze in visits to coffee shops.

I’ll be in Portland this weekend and I’ve been trying to piece together a reasonable (actually it’s pretty unreasonable, all things considered!) whirlwind tour of some of the coffee shops I want to try out. Many thanks to Emily McIntyre and the Case Study gang for being super helpful, as well as Ristretto and even the guys at Huckleberry in Denver for throwing in some suggestions.

Here’s the problem: I have Saturday and Sunday only, BUT I am committed from about 7:30AM to 5:00-5:30PM-ish both days. In Portland, just about everything opens at 7AM and closes at 6PM and my work will be about 30 minutes outside of where everything is happening in the center of town. So, that leaves me like 20 minutes both mornings and MAYBE an hour in the evenings if I can tie things up just a little early. LOL

The goal, right now, is to hit Ristretto when it opens at 6:30 on Saturday morning and then Case Study when it opens at 7 and hightail it back out east. On Saturday evening I’d like to hit Coava and Water Ave. Sunday morning I must get to heart and then I might try to hit some suggestions from Emily in the northeast part of town like Extracto, Red E, Albina Press and Arbor Lodge. I’ve honestly not even researched any of those ones, so I need to do my homework and get my stuff together ASAP.

My guess is that REALITY is going to dictate that Sunday PM is out altogether (have to pack stuff up to ship back, chit chat with students, etc etc and maybe even Saturday evening may be a wash. But, hey, we’ll see what happens! I’ll be ecstatic if I can hit four of these places.