The original Starbucks store was founded in 1971 just 9 blocks away from the relatively new Starbucks Reserve Roastery & Tasting Room on Pike Street. This shining crown jewel of Starbucks is a bold leap for specialty coffee as a whole.
This location is worth stopping by to check out the beautiful, vast space.
It’s 15,600 square feet, built to LEED specifications, with ceilings that range from 17 to 20 feet high throughout. It has two levels. The top floor features an espresso and brewed coffee megabar, a gift shop, a scoop shop selling the Reserve coffee beans, a 25-kilo Probat roaster, bar seating and lounging areas, a full array of baked goods and salads made on site, and a full-service pizza restaurant from Seattle celebrity chef Tom Douglas. The lower level has a 120-kilo Probat roaster, a “Coffee Library” area with telecommunications hookups and dozens of books, and a “Coffee Experience Bar” featuring Modbar brand steam wand taps, a bank of Bonmac siphon brewers, and a pour-over bar of proprietary Starbucks ceramic cones. This lower level also offers more lounge-style seating, bar seats at the “experience” counter, and ampitheater-style steps perfect for gathering a crowd for speaking engagements. This entire lower level is available for rent for corporate events and private meetings.
We had their Pantheon Roastery Blend coffee brewed with the siphon (and the super cool halogen lamps) at the Experience Bar. The Pantheon was a combination of coffees from Guatemala, Colombia, and Java. It’s a rich and complex coffee. Nice body with cocoa, black currant notes with sweet midtones. You don’t need any dairy with this coffee.
When the Experience Bar had to close up for a private event, we scooted ourselves up the stairs and to the service oval. The area that has individually designed showcase silos fed with fresh beans by a series of shiny copper pneumatic tubes. My companions didn’t want to go overboard with the caffeine, so they stepped down with the unsweetened matcha latte and a special matcha basil-mint latte. The latter is only available at the Roastery and it’s quite refreshing and not too sweet. My shakerato bianco with a side of fior di latte was nicely done. Not too sweet and the espresso was nice and cold.
The pastries we had were very tasty. The pineapple buttermilk cake was not too sweet and moist and had a good amount of pineapple flavor coming through. The raspberry almond danish was sweet-tart with bright raspberry flavor and the pastry was flaky. The mini coconut cream pies had a buttery and crumbly crust and the coconut cream was light as a cloud with a hint of coconut flavor.
To view more photos of this visit, please view the photo set or the gallery below:
[alpine-phototile-for-flickr src=”set” uid=”26389565@N00″ sid=”72157661861195303″ imgl=”flickr” shuffle=”1″ style=”gallery” row=”4″ grwidth=”1200″ grheight=”800″ size=”640″ num=”30″ shadow=”1″ border=”1″ align=”center” max=”100″]
Information:
Starbucks Reserve Roastery & Tasting Room<
Website
1124 Pike Street
Seattle, WA 98101
Phone: (206) 624-0173
