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.