So we hear that Chris and Jen, founders and owners of Victrola Coffee, have sold "Capitol Hill's living room" to a new guy, an established independent coffee entrepreneur, whom we believe is Dan Ollis of the Whidbey Coffee Co. Dan owns a string of java joints up Whidbey way, and has been looking to break into the Seattle coffee scene for some time. Meanwhile, Chris and Jen are still running things during a 90-day transition......

It’s one of those Sunday mornings where the air is very still and heavy, and the dim light is giving you plenty of room to recover from Saturday night. For us, it’s the perfect time to visit the newest Victrola Coffee location on Pike Street. We enter the spanky-fresh store, a location mostly done up in the very popular, but tepid modern design. Like a Santa Barbara beach, all the tables are blonde-topped. The......

Happy 2008, Seattle. Hope your morning view of the new year looks something like this. (And not like this.) Many thanks to Culinary Fool for dropping this shot in our Flickr pool.......

Lottie's Lounge, located in Colombia City, is a coffee shop, diner and bar, rolled into one. It's an experiential panacea for those who like to center their lives around one neighborhood joint-- not that Colombia City doesn't already have a lot going on. Lottie's is smack dab in the middle of a re-gentrifying neighborhood, filled with junk stores, boutiques, dive bars and...Starbucks. We walk in and are greeted by retro tables and chairs and what......

Victrola Coffee has their new roasteria location down at Pike and Terry, up from Six Arms, and they're holding public coffee cuppings on Wednesdays to let people in on a more behind-the-roaster view of their morning bean beverage. We've done this, and it's fun, but we warn you that we left thinking hummingbirds looked old and slow. While you're there, try out the new comfy chairs for us. We only had time to snap......

We stopped into the new Volunteer Park Cafe & Marketplace on our way to Interlaken Park this weekend, and found a gourmet but friendly cafe doing hopping business. Their website describes things nicely: We’ll be serving breakfast and lunch starting at 7 a.m. every day except Monday. We’ll focus on simple cuisine using quality fresh local and regional ingredients. Most items will be made in-house—pastries, dressings, quiche, sauces and soups. There will be a......

Now that we're not posting out of Victrola Coffee on a daily basis, heckling baristas from the safety of the back bar, we're having to rely on alternative news sources. Turns out they have been upgrading their "blog" with news we can use repurpose. Nothing yet on their take on the Slog vs. Victrola match-up on Capitol Hill Seattle, and Savage's shameless Slog-promotion. Whoever triumphs, we picture a strikingly difference scenario if one morning......

Let's just cut to the chase, pal. You were breaking into Victrola Coffee up on 15th Ave, weren't ya? Sneaky job, real pro. Cut the phone lines to disable the alarm, broke the door in, and you were off to the races. That's right, it was you, wasn't it? You're still jittery. You didn't know that Victrola is Capitol Hill's living room, didja? Lotta people are angry with you. Maybe they saw something. Maybe they'll......

There we were, mostly strangers, alerted by email, huddled around a table in a Capitol Hill back room. The product to be sampled was an extremely high-grade Bolivian variety, hard to get. Just a single bag had been a cooperative venture. "Get your nose all the way down there," we were instructed, "and make sure it's a good long inhale." So in many ways, our first coffee cupping was just what you'd expect. We hadn't......

We're not ones to keep score, you know, to count every little thing, but -- no, we're sorry. Can't keep a straight face. The whole point of this post is to mention we got to this P-I story on the new Clover drip coffeemaker, oh, about 4.5 months ago. In fact, not only did we try a few cups at a private function, but we had some during a few-day trial run at Victrola Coffee.......

As if you don't know, this weekend was the Northwest Regional Barista Competition, presented by the Specialty Coffee Association of America, and hosted by Hines Public Market Coffee and Stumptown Coffee Roasters. Seattlest was there, live, reporting away like a real reporter, just without the expense account. (Actually we had to leave to go find a hotspot. But we typed part of this post live and it was thrilling. We were standing *that* close......

Seattle is an espresso town. We don't just drink the standard pot of coffee, we order sophisticated-sounding specialty drinks. Our amateurish appreciation of coffee has spawned a broad artisan coffee community. So what is the number one independent coffee roaster/brewer in Seattle? Of course it is your favorite local coffee spot, but on Flickr, Victrola is sharing the joy and beauty of espresso. Victrola Coffee on Capitol Hill, at least publicly, seems to be the......