Nora, Eli and an oven that went in before the chairs
Nine years of somebody else's bakery, nine years of somebody else's coffee, and then one room on SE Ash Street.
Nora bakes, Eli pulls the shots, and between them they have never managed to leave before six.
We took the lease in 2017 on a room that had been a bike shop, a flower shop and, for two unhappy years, a phone repair place. The oven went in before the seating did, which tells you roughly how the priorities were set.
Nora had spent nine years in bakeries getting up at three, and wanted to keep doing that but in her own room. Eli had spent the same nine years learning that most café coffee is disappointing for reasons nobody bothers to fix. Neither of us set out to run a place people hold funerals in, but that is what a neighbourhood café turns into if you stay long enough.
There are five of us now. We close on Mondays because a seven-day week made everybody worse at the job, and we would rather be good six days than tired seven.
Four things we are fussy about
Every café says it sources carefully. Here is what that means in this one, with the trade-offs left in.
The coffee
Roasted in Portland, eight minutes from here, by people we buy from because we like the coffee and not because they gave us a machine. The espresso is a blend that stays put; the filter changes every fortnight.
The flour
Milled in the Willamette Valley. It is more expensive than the commodity stuff and it is the single biggest reason the croissants taste the way they do.
The eggs and the dairy
From two farms within an hour's drive. When one of them has a bad week we run out of quiche rather than buy in something else.
The fruit
Whatever is actually in season here, which means apples for a long stretch of the year and a short, very good run of berries in June.
What it actually looks like
No stock photographs and no borrowed interiors. This is the room, on ordinary mornings.
The kettle is on, more or less permanently.
SE Ash Street between 23rd and 24th, Tuesday to Sunday.