So here I am again on the hunt for a place where I can sit down, have a nice coffee or chai and do a bit of work on my laptop. I have passed a few coffee places, but not really anything that tickled my YES THIS FEELS OK – bud. Then I came across this place called Red E Café, just up from North Alberta Ave on North Killingsworth Street. It is spacious, high ceiling, huge windows, large scaled pieces of printed art unframed on the walls and a bit of an industrial feel to it with a massive metallic pipe suspended from the ceiling. People sitting around with laptops every where, – so def an internet connection, which is great for me at this moment, as I want to go on line too.
I have an americana coffee with milk and a chelsea type of bun to go with it. Staff is friendly and that is all, no more or less, and that is fine. The background music has a spacious quality to it too, and is interesting enough to be inspiring and at the same time allows me to concentrate on what I’m doing. Then I am in my element, the coffee tastes good, and I settle down with my laptop, left undisturbed to go online without being asked if I want another coffee all the time. If you want another drink you just go up and order one.
I am thrilled to discover that this café was founded by two people, Keith Miller & Mindy Farley who have been local residents of the North Portland since 1996 and opened this place in 2009 after years of planning and looking for the right place. They settled in Portland after a long cycling trip and ended up staying ‘due to a higher calling or simply because we ran out of money’ as Mindy Farley says on their website. They have since opened another café in the Pearl District Ecotrust Building and have started to roast their own coffee.
All in all a perfect place to sit down and do your own work. Atmosphere is open, a great place to come on your own, but fine to have chat with others too as long as you are not too loud, as there is def a work-feel to this place. Also great to feel an atmosphere of trust, the guy sitting at the table next to me walked outside the café for a well over 15 minutes, leaving his laptop wide open on the table and bag still there. Then he came back and continued to write on his laptop. He has just left his the café again with all his things till here.
If there was anything I could have wished was different in here would be the food. It did not look that exciting and the chealsea bun I ordered tasted ok but nothing special, – a good opportunity for Red E Café to develop this side of things if they wanted to.Ah, now the style of music changes to an interesting mix of funk and blues, would quite like to stay and listen to this, but another time …
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