Herkimer Coffee - Seattle, WA

I'm still trying to catch up from the latest road trip, which has been a bit of a struggle as we keep moving around making hard to sit down and write. Currently I am back in Manitou where it is rainy and clouded over, reminding me of the northwest and the topic of this post: Herkimer Coffee, in Seattle.

When I moved to Portland, OR in 2005 I was not much of a coffee drinker. I would drink at most a cup or two some mornings, but never regularly and never anything beyond Folgers or Starbucks. I made it through the first year out there without upping my weekly percentage too much. It was not until my second winter/spring in Portland that I came to realize that coffee was salvation from the endless cloudy skies and rain (sidenote: does it rain in the northwest? Yes. A lot. But, it is not the rain that makes the northwest a hard place to live in - it's the endless gray skies. Think nuclear winter, but with more caffeinated survivors, and that is what the winter and spring is like).

As I get more into coffee, I try to explore various coffee shops to see what else is out there. One of my favorites in Seattle is Herkimer Coffee, on the Phinney Ridge near the Ballard section of NW Seattle (7320 Greenwood Avenue N., Seattle, WA 98103 - there is another location in the University District which I have not checked out). It has a cool, "modern" interior and seems to be a favorite of the neighboorhood. Definitely a locals scene in there. They roast and sell their own coffee, which is all really good. To me, the best part of Herkimer is that it is a local business that appears to be thriving in the epi-center of Starbucks America. You have to love that.