Monday, January 25, 2016

Starbucks Roastery & Tasting Room

Until I moved to Seattle after college, I had never been a huge coffee person. In fact, there were days that I didn't have a sip of the stuff. Other days, I would have 3-4 cups, but mostly I drank it sporadically. I certainly didn't rely on it daily.  But living in Seattle does something to the occasional coffee drinker.  Whether it's the coffee stands in parking lots (yes, it's a Seattle thing) or what feels like the Starbucks-on-every-corner-effect, Seattle makes you want to love coffee. So, basically Seattle turned me into a coffee lover. 

Fun fact: Seattle has 23 coffee shops for every 100,000 residents which is the most per-capita in the U.S. But there is only one Starbucks Roastery & Tasting Room in the world... While we were in Seattle for Christmas break visiting Jake's family, we snuck away for an afternoon and visited the Starbucks Reserve Roastery & Tasting Room. I had been wanting to visit this place ever since it opened in late 2014. My co-worker visited in mid-2015 and after hearing about her experience, it made me even more excited to try this place! I heard that this location has seasonal specialty food and drinks that are not served at any other Starbucks location.  So fun!

I was most curious about the location. As you probably know, there is not a lot of prime real estate available in Capitol Hill to build a gigantic place like this. So, before we visited Jake and I were trying to figure out where this was located. For some reason, I thought it was in South Seattle near the  Company HQ --  but once we started googling, it all made sense. In 2013, my old Volvo dealership closed and it had been announced that the space would be redeveloped. Lo and behold -- a year and half later, the Roastery and Tasting Room was born. I do have a lot of memories taking my first Volvo (we are now on our second and third) to the dealership for repairs, oil changes, etc. So now I can make new memories, drinking one of a kind coffee and tasting delectable new pastries. I'm in! 





This board is my favorite -- it kept clicking and clacking for when they were roasting a new flavor.


The beans came down those tubes and kept refilling the containers when they got too low.



I tried the Cranberry Almond Danish pictured below. It was to die for. I am only hoping that my local Starbucks will start carrying it. or maybe I don't hope that since I would want one every time I set foot in there. 


What did we drink, you ask? Jake tried the Cameroon Mt. Oka reserve coffee (he drinks black coffee now -- yes I am married to an old man). I tried the Matcha Basil-Mint Latte.  We were both very impressed. 


One of the coolest parts was this big machine that roasts all of the reserve coffee beans that Starbucks sells worldwide. If you see a package of Starbucks reserve coffee beans, it came through this facility. How cool is that?!?! It was fun to watch the process for a bit. 



 Have you been to the Starbucks Roastery & Tasting Room in Seattle? What did you think?

xoxo,

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