CoffeeBeer >> Double Shot Buzz >> Ballard 3
On the final leg of this year’s America trip, I spent my last two weeks in my former home of Seattle. After a week on Bainbridge Island and up in Lake City, I moved down to Ballard, where my Bay Area friend Mistah Rick and I had booked an AirB&B. Ballard is located on the north side of Seattle’s Ship Canal. The area was originally settled at the end of the last glacial period by the Duwamish people, who took advantage of the plentiful supplies of fresh salmon and clams. By the mid 1850s the first white settlers had started to arrive, constructing railroad spurs and eventually the Hiram Chittenham Locks. By the early 1900s the fisheries and mills started to attract Scandinavian immigrants, giving Ballard its strong Norwegian influences. By 1907 the area was established as an official neighbourhood of the city of Seattle.
As it turned out, our back-alley Ballard bungalow was within five minutes walking distance of no less than nine brewpubs, and I shall be reporting on these later in Pint Pleasures. But as we were in Seattle, our location was also close to some decent coffee venues.
I arrived a day early, and on the morning of Rick’s arrival, I took off to find breakfast, passing lots of murals, until I finally reached Woodland Coffee. When I entered, I found the family-owned cafe very bright, clean, modern, and unadorned--except, perhaps, for the chain of little Xmas trees hanging across the front windows, and the skeleton sitting in the corner. A man and woman were seated across from each other, both on their mobiles, two older women were chatting with each other, and the other four customers were on their laptops.
My Cortado, served in a blue stoneware cup with saucer, was topped with a very pretty rosette, and it was quite good. My plain croissant did the trick for the moment, as I would probably get myself a light lunch in a couple of hours. When I seated myself at a table, I noticed that the other pastries being offered this morning were muffins, sweet things, and bagels, and on the side of the counter was a fridge stocked with sandwiches and drinks.
I instantly found Woodland to be a perfectly relaxing place to enjoy a rare moment of solitude without someone else talking nonstop at me, as had been happening several times throughout my multi-state visit. I mean, these were all good friends and cousins I’m referring to, so I love them all dearly; but I could suddenly hear my own thoughts again! The song that was currently playing was by a local band, Bread Pilot, who sounded to me like a sunny Pacific Coast version of Stone Roses.
As I sipped my coffee and ate my croissant, one more laptop user joined the small army of laptop users. Because I usually enjoy the old-fashioned writing-in-a-notebook method of making my column notes, I felt a bit like an artist from an earlier century, although I was wielding a Bic rather than a quill. But then I noticed a young woman who was sitting quietly reading a book--an actual physical book!
It was finally time to step back into the 21st Century, pull out my phone, and check GoogleMaps to see where I was off to next. I suppose, seeing as how my Samsung Galaxy was nearly three years old, it could have been considered an “antiquity” in the mobile phone sense.
This place was so comfortable that after Rick joined me, we had breakfast here a couple more times, and on those occasions I opted for a delicious dill Parmesan scone with my Cortado.
One morning after Rick had arrived, we planned to head downtown to see the Boeing 747 lodged between two skyscrapers, followed by a stroll past Jeff Bezos’s Big Balls. But first we walked west down Leary Way to find some breakfast. As we approached Biscuit & Bean, a couple of daring window cleaners were performing some altitudinous acrobatics just across the road. We watched them for a bit and then, deciding nothing calamitous was about to happen, we went inside the cafe.
Obviously half of Biscuit & Bean’s speciality is good coffee, and the other half is their freshly baked biscuits--the savoury American kind, that is, that both Rick and I remember from the breakfasts of our childhood. We both went for one of their breakfast sandwiches, specifically the Buttermilk Biscuits with Goat Cheese and Scrambled Egg. Having had a proper biscuit with butter in Atlanta, Georgia during the first week of my USA visit, I decided I may have finally sated my craving for proper American biscuits for the moment.
We accompanied our biscuit sandwiches with two very nice Cappuccinos. The beans they use are from Fulcrum Roasters, based down in Seattle’s SODO district, and the coffee was rich and full of flavour.
Having opened in 2014, Biscuit & Bean serves both breakfast and lunch, and aside from sandwiches they offer various homemade spreads for the biscuits such as jams, apple or maple butter, aioli, or herbed goat cheese. Or if you prefer gravy on your biscuit, there’s a choice of either pork sausage or mushroom leak. So what a gem of a place. I wish there was something like this in Sheffield.
On another morning as we were getting ready to go find breakfast, Rick shoved his hands into his pockets and announced, "I found a battered quarter and I hear goats." The sounds were from the Emergency Goat Pocket Noise Maker that Rick had bought the day before at the always-essential Seattle shopping experience, Archie Mcphee. I had really wanted to get one for myself; but as I had a long journey ahead of me, which involved traversing through two more countries, I was afraid that just while I was sailing smoothly through Security or Passport Control, my luggage might accidentally set off what would sound like a herd of excited goats. I mean, that could be quite embarrassing.
This time the two of us set off walking toward the far west of Ballard passing all sorts of old Ballard buildings: mariner’s union halls, old music clubs, and a mixture of cafes and restaurants. We finally reached our destination, Cardoon. The cafe was very tiny, and there were people sitting around knitting, because apparently this was Knitting Thursday. So Rick and I squeezed into the only seats that were left. Sadly my Cortado wasn’t very impressive, and my Egg & Cheese Sandwich that I ordered with no strawberry chili jam, thank you very much, was served dripping with strawberry chili jam. So I had to take it back, and I’m afraid my Egg & Cheese Sandwich had very little taste. So no wonder they sell people on the sweet jam. I think Rick’s Muesli Skyr Bowl was probably satisfactory, but as it was topped with jujube syrup it would have been way too sweet for me as well. I mean, there are a few of us out there who don’t want sugary breakfasts. Oh well, you can’t always win. We would try to do better for lunch later on.
Established in 2022, Cardoon serves house-made Chinese and German influenced food and drink, so that might explain the emphasis on sweet things. And it’s proud of being an active member of the Nordic-inspired Ballard community, so that’s always a good thing. It’s just not my cup of tea, if you’ll pardon the pun.
Speaking of community feeling reminds me of a recent WhatsApp conversation with Rick about nationwide mobile phone alerts:
Related Links