Watch out Maple Leafers, the secret is out!
We’ve known for years that we have some of the city’s best coffee shops (and Chinese restaurants!), but it appears that the rest of Seattle is starting to catch on.
A Big Blog post proudly displayed now on the home page of SeattlePI.com, “Seattle’s 15 best coffee shops, and why Starbucks made the list,” includes both Cloud City Coffee, 8801 Roosevelt Way N.E., and Cafe Javasti, 8410 Fifth Ave. N.E. (and in Wedgwood at 8617 35th Ave. N.E.), as Nos. 3 and 4, respectively.
For Cloud City, the P-I writes:
A friendly staff, a kid-friendly atmosphere and a $1 honor-system coffee bar. You’d want to come back every day, too.
And for Javasti:
This cafe and bakery in Wedgwood and Maple Leaf has god-awesome crepes. Enough said.
Yay for Maple Leaf!
Cloud City totally deserves this. If anyone knows bitter espresso, it’s me. Fanatical decaf drinker, I’ve never had a bitter shot there.
Javasti is awesome at the sheer fact that they make a buckwheat crepe, and are willing to accomodate picky crepe eaters 😉
YAY Maple Leaf!
The pastries, coffees, teas and immediate service at Blue Saucer are wonderful. In better weather one can enjoy Blue Saucer’s offerings outside. However, the music there has sucked whenever I’ve gone in, so it’s great for coffee-and-treat-on-the-go.
Admittedly music isn’t everything. Cafe Racer down in Roosevelt has tremendous coffee, dazzling interior, and excellent music and it’s nowhere on the top fifteen. I suspect that many (but not all: definitely not the case at Cafe Javasti) the top fifteen were voted on by people who tend to park their seats and laptops for hours at a time.
Love Blue Saucer – coffee is the best of any of these three, and wonderful pastries. It’s newer than the other two, but perfect for those of us in the northwest corner of Maple Leaf!
I am a regular at Cloud City and indeed it has fabulous community feel, speedy baristas…and even if you’re not a coffee fan, the comprehensiveness of their food menu is pretty amazing (and now a full BBQ menu with their own smoker!). Blue Saucer lacks the atmosphere of CCC for sure – it’s a stop’n’go run of the mill shop that is sometimes painfully slow. I can see how it doesn’t really have a stand out vibe like the other two. In all honesty, looking at the list it’s so great TWO shops in Maple Leaf made it among such a small group of iconic Seattle shops!!! A testament to a great ‘hood.
The community at Cloud City is awesome, but their coffee is terrible (so bitter). I’m not sure their community is so great that it makes up for sub-par coffee.
Congrats to Cloud City and Cafe Javasti!
Living just east of Roosevelt I am a frequent customer of Cloud City. I love Javasti, but don’t get over there as much as I would like. Blue Saucer is also a great local coffee shop. I guessing its small size probably kept it from being considered in the PI list.
Cloud City is what “community” is about. I love the honor bar, the cinnamon rolls (on weekends only), and all the funny characters that are regulars/staff. They keep it real, and their prices are super affordable. (Tony’s coffee)
They seem to have forgot Blue Saucer. The superior coffee shop in Maple Leaf.