Caffè Umbria

303 Northwest 12th Avenue

SPECIALTY

Caffè Umbria is a specialty coffee shop located in Portland. Check in here with the Pulled Coffee app to earn real cash rewards. Specialty shops count toward all challenges including Pulled 50, Pulled 100, and Pulled 300.

Caffe Umbria sits at 303 Northwest 12th in Portland's Pearl District, a stretch of converted warehouses where breweries and galleries share the block. The Pearl shop opened in December 2007. The owner is a third-generation Italian coffee roaster, and the menu reads more Perugia than Pacific Northwest. Espresso is pulled the traditional Italian way, short and dense, served in warm ceramic. Latte and macchiato are the flagships. The food side carries piadine, panini, soup, and pasta, with beer and wine in the late afternoon. On weekday mornings the room runs as a branch office for entrepreneurs who meet over macchiatos and stay an hour. The space stays open through six in the evening, longer than most Portland cafes. Order the macchiato if you want espresso prepared the way an Italian roaster prepares it. Order a piadina with afternoon coffee if you came for the Pearl District version of an Italian afternoon.

About Portland

Portland built its specialty register on roasters who never moved off the Eastside. Stumptown Coffee Roasters opened on SE Division in 1999 and set the city template for the decade that followed. Coava Coffee Roasters opened in 2008 in a Matt Higgins garage, then moved into the working roastery and Public Brew Bar at 1015 SE Main, a block off the Hawthorne Bridge. Roseline opened in 2011 on SE 11th across from Kachka, with a second cafe on NE Alberta in Concordia. Water Avenue Coffee runs a downtown shop at 1300 SW 5th and the original flagship across the river on SE Water Avenue with a vintage French Samiac drum roaster.

The neighborhood map covers most of the city. Central Eastside and Buckman hold the working roasteries. Hawthorne, Division, and Sellwood-Brooklyn run the slower neighborhood bars. Alberta and Concordia in Northeast carry the second-wave Eastside cafes. The Pearl District covers the Italian and downtown register through Caffe Umbria on NW 12th, which opened in December 2007. Foster-Powell holds Space Monkey Coffee on the corner of SE 72nd and Foster, anchoring that quadrant since 2004.

Portland is also the city where the multi-roaster bean bar started. Barista on NW 13th opened in 2009 in a Pearl District storefront and ran multiple top roasters on the same bar instead of one house roast. The model spread across the city. The result is a market where most serious cafes pour two or three rotating roasters and the bar conversation rotates with them.