Things I Ate in Port Townsend, WA

I took trip to Port Townsened, Washington with my girlfriend last week  to visit her family and enjoy a little R & R.  Port Townsend is a small coastal town about two hours northwest of Seattle -- it famously spawned the bumper sticker "Port Townsend: We're Here Because We're Not All There".[bxA]

The best thing I ate on the trip was a fish taco from a street vendor at the annual Uptown Street Fair. I don't know why New York can't get fish tacos right. This one was great -- three large pieces of heavily battered, perfectly fried cod, hugged by fresh guacamole, pico de gallo and a light but creamy beschamel sauce. Seriously, this needs to make the cross country trip.

Did you know that New York is not the only place that has food trucks? I didn't try coffee from the Java Gypsy coffee truck, but I can vouch for the fact that the barista, who looked like a young Stevie Nicks, was a beast on the espresso machine even though she had a toddler in a sling strapped to her.

 

Also at the Uptown Street Fair: this woman chillaxing in a baby carriage stuffed to the brim with fresh vegetables.

Breakfast is a big deal in Port Townsend. The Hudson Scramble at The Port Hudson Cafe is superb -- scrambled eggs, spinach, mushrooms, roasted new potatoes and nicely smokey bacon, smothered in very good mozzarella cheese. I haven't had a fresher tasting egg dish anywhere in New York.

Port Hudson's cherry cornmeal pancakes are also a hit. The mix of slightly salty batter and sour cherries really sing when butter and maple syrup are liberally applied.

Waterfront Pizza is a Port Townsend institution. For over 25 years they have been making a durable sourdough crust pie, with a slightly sweet marinara sauce and a well dispersed layer of good commercial grade mozzarella.

I loved how the andoullie sausage on the half sausage half regular pie we ordered was layered in a perfectly even blanket, and added a rich and spicy kick to what is a very starchy pizza. Comparing Wafterfront to John's or DiFara's is an apples to oranges kind of thing, but even by pizza snob standards, this is very, very good stuff.

Coffee. Where to start? There seem to be as many coffee places in Port Townsend as there are mailboxes. I think I tried about three different cups of coffee every day I was in town. On average, the coffee was much, much better than anything we have in New York, mostly because everyone brews it very strong. 

The coffee from Sweet Laurette's is the closest facsimile to what I consider to be the best coffee in the world -- Peet's from Berkeley, California. In a blind taste test, I don't know if I could tell the two apart. Sweet Laurette's uses Umbria Coffee Company beans -- their drip coffee has a rich, ashy taste akin to a good piece of dark chocolate.

Tyler Street Cafe also has excellent drip coffee, which miraculously has no trace of bitterness, even though it is dispensed from large self-serve urns. The beans are from Seattle-based Caffe Vita -- the brew isn't as rich as Sweet Laurette's, but it is just as strong.

The Poulsbohemian Coffeehouse in the nearby town of Poulsbo is a charming old cafe perched on a bluff overlooking Liberty Bay. Great vibe, sufficiently strong if slightly acrid coffee from the Mukiliteo Coffee Company. I'm told espresso is the thing to get here.

I was excited to try the coffee from Undertown Coffeehouse, as they serve Stumptown beans, the Portland-based coffee company that is all the rage in New York right now. I've had Stumptown from maybe five or six different places in NYC, and each cup has been god awful. Their coffee is always weak and has a weird perfumey taste, like someone tried to add "coffee flavor" to the beans or something. I figured that if there was one place to try Stumptown, it would in the trendy twentysomething hangout in downtown Port Townsend.

It was apparent that the gang at Undertown knew what they were doing. Upon ordering a cup of drip, they gave me the option of having the dregs of a pot that that was already being served, or a fresh cup from a pot that had just been brewed (they throw their coffee away after thirty minutes). I opted for the older pot, and my girlfriend got a cup of the fresher stuff. As I fixed my coffee, I wondered, was I about to have some of the best coffee of my life? 

Nope.  Both cups of the Stumptown coffee tasted exactly like they do in New York. I give up. Stumptown makes horrible coffee.  While they might know a lot about marketing their brand, they certainly don't know the first thing about what coffee should taste like. I swear to god -- this cup in particular tasted like a Whoppers malt ball.

The Fountain Cafe is the kind of restaurant that simply doesn't exist in New York. The decor is funky, there's one dude on the kitchen who cooks everything, the wine list is stellar, the pastas are splashy but very good, the seafood is fresh and properly seasoned, the desserts are big gooey lip smackers, and everything is reasonably priced. 

On our last few days in town, we kept hearing of places to try and foods to sample that we never got around to. Port Townsend is a relatively small town -- population nine thousand -- but it is something of a cultural hub for the area. There seem to be a lot of people passing through, whether it is weekenders staying at a B and B, or sailors in town because of its many harbors and dry-docks -- I guess it makes sense that the food would be so solid, and the coffee would be like rocket fuel.