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About The daily Astorian. (Astoria, Or.) 1961-current | View Entire Issue (Jan. 26, 2017)
14 // COASTWEEKEND.COM BEST COFFEE & BEST CUSTOMER SERVICE Street 14 Café Astoria, Oregon BEST COFFEE Runner-up: 3 Cups Coffee House, Astoria Honorable Mention: Sleepy Monk Coffee Roasters, Cannon Beach BEST CUSTOMER SERVICE Runner-up: Frite & Scoop, Astoria Honorable Mention: Costco Wholesale, Warrenton By DWIGHT CASWELL PHOTO BY DWIGHT CASWELL Chef Andrew Catalano heads Street 14 Café’s weekend dinner service. BEST CHEF Andrew Catalano Street 14 Café, Astoria, Oregon Runner-up: Michael Lalewicz, The Depot, Seaview, Washington Honorable Mention: Alec Evans, Astoria Coffeehouse & Bistro By DWIGHT CASWELL From 5 to 9 p.m. Thursday through Saturday, Street 14 Café morphs from daytime coffeehouse to an evening farm-to-table restaurant pre- sided over by Chef Andrew Catalano, whom Coast Week- end readers consider the Best Chef in the area. “If I was to distill our mis- sion to one value,” Catalano says, “it is to be a part of the community and to support our local farms.” The restaurant is small, seating less than 40, which means, Catalano says, “I get to cook every plate.” Be- cause he’s dependent on local produce, Catalano changes the menu every week, and it’s always simple food that shows off expert execution. On the menu, he also credits all the local farmers, purvey- ors and foragers that supply the restaurant. “We’re produce driven,” he says, “There’s meat and fish on the menu, but the stars are our beautiful vegetables.” Catalano uses whatever cooking technique is suitable for the food available, and he handcrafts almost all the pasta used at Street 14, something unique on the coast. He also does a lot of fermenting because, “It unlocks a lot of flavors you can’t get any other way,” he says. Chef Catalano first learned to cook from his mother, which was followed by on- the-job training in an organic farm kitchen in Italy, and then with experienced chefs in New York. In the process, he came to the conclusion that it’s important for food to be connected place, something he found lacking when he arrived in Oregon. “We’re taking a small step in that direction,” says Catalano. Street 14 Café is a meet- ing place for the community. You might stop there several days a week for breakfast or for a cup of excellent coffee and a bran muffin or pastry, and perhaps have a business lunch there, and then a dinner date on Friday night. You may plan to meet someone, or just run into a friend there. It’s a congenial kind of place. “We’re nice, and we like what we do,” says Micha Cameron-Lattek, who owns the café with his wife, Jenni- fer. “We have a talented staff who like being part of the community, and they enjoy serving.” That sounds simple enough, but the staff seems to always have a friendly face and a good attitude, even at the end of a long PHOTO BY DWIGHT CASWELL The staff at Street 14 en- joy serving their customers Stumptown coffee. day. They get to know their customers and of- ten anticipate their needs. Which explains why readers named them Best Customer Service. Of course, a coffee shop should have great coffee, too, and that’s the other thing Coast Weekend readers liked. Street 14 is the only local purveyor of Stumptown Coffee, which has been roasted in Portland since 1999. Justly famed for the quality of its coffee, Stumptown is direct traded. The company deals directly with its growers, so there is transparency about where the coffee come from. Working with Stumptown convinced Street 14 Café to have a direct relationship with its own local purveyors. “It’s a smaller supply chain,” says Cameron-Lattek, “and we support our commu- nity and our farmers and foragers. We can answer any questions from our custom- ers about where our food comes from.” A commitment to com- munity, good food, and world class coffee. Does it get any better than that? Street 14 Cafe is located at the corner of Commercial and 14th streets in down- town Astoria. PHOTO BY DANNY MILLER Jennifer and Micha Cameron-Lattek opened Street 14 Cafe in downtown Astoria after living in Berlin and becoming Stumptown Coffee Roasters’ first purveyors in Germany. They expanded their bistro coffee shop with a seasonal weekend dinner service in the fall of 2015.
