Portland Coffeehouse Journal: The Vegan Post

To be clear, I'm not vegan. Though I am a fan. I marvel at the will it takes to completely eschew all animal products from your life and strive to live "cruelty free."

Really, it would just be nice to lose some weight and learn how to incorporate kohlrabi into an everyday diet.

But let's say you're vegan and you love your espresso. What to do?

Aside from checking out this great photo tour of Portland's best soy lattes from preeminent local vegan blogger, Jess of Let's Get Sconed, please join me on a short tour of Portland's vegan and vegan-friendly coffeehouses.

Now, I've only found one completely vegan coffeehouse and that is Sweetpea Baking Co. While more "bakery" than "coffeehouse," they do serve espresso and always feature cute folks typing on laptops and perhaps nursing a brand new vegan tattoo from neighbor Scapegoat Tattoo, so they count as a coffeehouse in my book.

This place has absolutely no animal products to offer. As in, you will need to get your latte with rice, soy, almond or hemp milk. The prices are still reasonable and the milks are carefully handled to stand up to the steaming and mixing.

Sweetpea serves up Stumptown coffee and by far one of the best scones I've ever had, vegan or not. They also feature a weekend brunch that is killer. Get stuffed on the freshest breakfast items from a rotating menu. If you live in Portland, you must try this brunch at least once in your life.

Next up is Black Sheep Bakery, also mainly a bakery that sells their treats at farmer's markets and local grocery stores, but their two shop locations are a great place to stop in for fresh-baked muffins and bars.

Black Sheep does not discriminate against us omnivores and does offer moo milk with your coffee. As well, their 523 NE 19th location serves up vegan and non-vegan lunch and breakfast items.

I have to admit that I don't enjoy their baked goods as much as Sweetpea's. Too much molasses for my tastes. At each location they serve up Portland Roasting coffee, which, as I've said before, is not one of my favorite roasters.

I think with a little quality control and tweaking of their muffin recipes, Black Sheep could be a great shop. But it is not at the top of my list.

At the very bottom of my list is The Waypost on N. Williams. I only include it here because they had all vegan items in their display case and had mostly vegan lunch selections.

When I stopped in it was about 8am on a weekday and the only offerings were bagels and one or two vegan muffins. Both of these muffins were stuffed with vegan sausage.

I bought the vegan-sausage-stuffed-muffin. Was a little apprehensive about what it would taste like? Yes. How was it? Let's just say one bite was all I needed to stuff the muffin back in the bag and make a bee line to a different coffeehouse for a decent breakfast.

I think a vegan-sausage-stuffed-muffin could be an incredibly delicious treat, this one was not.

But a yucky muffin was not the only disappointing part of The Waypost. The barista was distracted, almost forgetting to even take my payment. And when he handed me my 12 oz. latte, there was only about 10 oz. of latte in the cup.

It's funny that we sometimes only spend about 3-5 minutes in a coffeehouse and in that time several things can go horribly wrong and turn us off of a place forever.

When you live in a city with so many coffee options, coffeehouses have to be on top of their game all the time in order to keep customers coming back.

Looking to offer another vegan choice in Portland is Back to Eden Bakery. Providing New Seasons Market Concordia with baked vegan goods, Back to Eden Bakery is about to open its doors on its first retail location at 2217 NE Alberta St. any day now. Here's hoping Back to Eden will be serving up some quality coffee along side their cakes and cookies.

This is by no means an exhaustive list of all the vegan-friendly coffeehouses in Portland. Seven Virtues Coffee in East Portland also has many vegan options. But this should be enough to get you started on your way to getting caffeinated without the cruel.

Seven Virtues and Bipartisan Cafe

This weekend I boldly went where I rarely go: East Portland. Hanging out at the same places around my home in Northeast was getting old so I did some research and picked a couple of interesting places to spend the weekend afternoons.

On Saturday I tracked down Seven Virtues, an light-filled space on Glisan and 60th. I was very impressed by the great design elements. It's a very neat and well-organized location without being too sparse and hollow.

Each table has their logo stamped on top with a different virtue written on each. I sat at the Honesty table.

Following a very popular trend in Portland, they feature vegan baked goods along side of Crema's animal-filled treats. The vegan cookies came from Sift Bakery, a bakery I haven't heard of yet, they seem like a budding Portland endeavor from their sparse site, but you can also find them at K&F Coffee on Clinton. (Though if you are more interested in a non-vegan delight you need to try the cinnamon roll with gobs of frosting.)

The coffee was decent the vegan soup was passable, but what will keep me coming back is the bright space and great crowd. Lots of neighborhood families and couples enjoying a peaceful afternoon.

But if you want your coffee served with a little more bustle and action, then go check out Bipartisan Cafe. Hilary and Obama have been seen at this coffeehouse over on Stark and 80th. Ok, so it was a cardboard cut-out of each of them. But really this is the place to be this election year. They held a mock caucus recently and are gearing up for the Oregon primary in May. They have the delegate counts posted from all the states up to now and have the best collection of political memorabilia I've ever seen. It looks like a high school history class with a selection of house-made pies in the corner.

All in all it was a very exciting weekend, coffeehouse-wise. East Portland, who knew you had so much to offer?