I had a $12 coffee at the fanciest Starbucks in America - and it was only okay
The very first Starbucks in Seattle's Pike Place Market is a major tourist attraction, as you can tell from the lines to the left of the door here. But on the inside, it's barely different than your normal, everyday Starbucks. Wake up, people!
Might I suggest the 20-minute walk from the Pike Place market to the Starbucks Roastery, instead? It's a newer, fancier kind of coffee joint that the company bills as the Starbucks of the future.
The Starbucks Roastery gets its name because it's where they actually, literally roast the coffee beans for the premium Starbucks Reserve coffee that you can buy in Starbucks stores across America.
That means that while you enjoy your coffee, you can enjoy and appreciate the massive industrial processes that Starbucks puts into its beans.
Like, seriously, you can't get any closer to the process.
That proximity to your beans makes for an experience much more squarely focused on the coffee snob, with slow-pour brewing and fancy espresso drinks the order of the day. You won't find your skinny mocha-whip caramel frappucinno on this menu.
What stuck out to me was the "siphon" option — described by the menu as "a highly visual experience of the original full-immersion brewing and vacuum filtration." I have no clue what that means, but at $12 for 12 ounces of coffee, it better be good!
The way it works is, the bottom chamber is filled with superheated water. The vapor from the bottom gets funneled through a narrow tube...
...up to the upper chamber, which is filled with coffee grounds. You can choose any of their six daily coffee bean choices.
Once the water brews with the coffee, your friendly neighborhood barista removes the heat...
...and the coffee comes back down into the bottom chamber.
Ta-da, 12 ounces of highly visual, $12 coffee. You can't really tell here, but those are tiny cups. You're supposed to sip this coffee.
So how was it? Not bad, but not great. The coffee beans I chose, Colombia Las Margaritas, had a nice and fruity aftertaste, but otherwise, I had trouble telling how it was materially better than my normal $2 cup of black Starbucks coffee.
Beyond coffee, the Starbucks Roastery offers premium food: They actually bake their pastries in-house, making them the only Starbucks nationwide to do so.
It also offers some premium coffee supplies, like a home version of those siphon brewers, these cool leather cup sleeves...
...and, uh, bicycles. Locally made bicycles. From Starbucks. What a world! What a country!
It's still definitely a Starbucks, though, with lots of seating room. So you can kick back and relax with the free WiFi while you enjoy your $12 coffee.
Overall, the Starbucks Roastery is pretty nifty. I wonder about the willingness of the American public to pay this much more for fancy coffee, but you can't beat the ambiance, and it's cool to watch your beans get roasted.
So here's to Starbucks, which plans to open more Roastery stores across the world in the next year or two. Cheers!
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