Press: Theo + Vita. Coffee + Chocolate of the month club featured in Gourmet.

Huge thanks to Gourmet for featuring our lovely little chocolate + coffee = happiness. Coffee + chocolate of the month club. You can grab a subscription here...

Press: Vita Coffee Served in... the 50 Top New Restaurants in the U.S.

Making a late introduction across our press desk we discovered the Travel + Leisure's annual 50 Best New Restaurants in the U.S. We were thrilled to find several new restaurants that serve Vita getting well deserved acclaim: Quinn's, Co, How to Cook a Wolf, Poppy, (and our cups make an appearance at the Pike Street Fish Fry).

You can view the slide show here

Public Notice: Vita+Theo Monthly Cupping

Join Vita and Theo Chocolate the first Friday of each month for a public cupping and chocolate tasting taking place at the Capitol Hill Caffe Vita. The cupping begins at 10am so be prepared to have your mind blown by these delicious chocolates which the New York Times has described as "a tasty rush that goes straight to the back of your skull............"

Tonight: Big Night For Abruzzo, Have a Drink and a Bite to Support a Great Cause

A portion of today's proceeds from Caffe Vita, Via Tirbunali and some of our favorite northwest Italian restaurants will be donated to the victims of the L'Aquila earthquake. This tragic earthquake hit 6.3 on the Richter scale and devastated the central Italian region of Abruzzo on April 6th 2009 @ 3:25AM, taking close to 300 lives, hospitalizing over 25,000 and displacing more than 60,000.

You can read more about it in today's Seattle Times Dining Section.

We hope to see you out tonight!

vita + one pot + foodista

vita and one pot team up with foodista on an experimental dinner...

www.foodista.com is charging ahead with their plans to become the wikipedia of food (and recipes and ingredients) on the web and they are doing a lovely job. one pot, caffe vita, foraged and found edibles, and chef conor donahue got together with foodista to test the technology... in real time.

the idea was rather simple - source all the best foraged items available in the northwest - lay the stuff out in a kitchen - add three chefs - and let them cook up new recipes from scratch. add foodista to translate the rapid cooking to recipe form - and publish the recipes and documentation (in real time) invite friends and host a dinner wherein all the guests can take home the recipes they just feasted upon. share it with the world. this was our first foray into this realm - expect more to come.

here is the menu and links to the recipes.

raw porcini salad on lemon balm leaves

butter clam fritters with wild sorrel tartar sauce

raw local scallops with sea beans and shiso

wood violet and miners lettuce salad with elderflower vinaigrette with fried morels

octopus, garlic scape, and wild onion blossoms

local farro with walnuts, purslane, and scallions

elk braised with gathered figs

elderflower shortbread with strawberries in elderflower syrup.

caffe vita farm direct gayo river sumatra

photos by melissa peterman

Big Night For Abruzzo Wednesday, June 24th!

Next Wednesday, June 24th Caffe Vita, Via Tirbunali and some of our favorite northwest Italian restaurants will rally to raise funds by donating a portion of their days sales to the victims of the L'Aquila earthquake. This tragic earthquake hit 6.3 on the Richter scale and devastated the central Italian region of Abruzzo on April 6th 2009 @ 3:25AM, taking close to 300 lives, hospitalizing over 25,000 and displacing more than 60,000.

Proceeds will be given directly to Polisportiva Paganica Rugby and used to help rebuild the sports and recreation facility lost in the devastated town of Paganica, the epicenter of the earthquake. Currently, hundreds of displaced youth in Paganica and neighboring communities have no organized sports or facilities because of the destruction resulting from the earthquake.

Save the date and make a reservation!



Caffe Vita's Mike McConnell, Brendan McGill and Francesco Angiuli of Via Tribunali returned from Paganica this week, where they saw first hand the devastating aftermath of this earthquake. The trio brought back photos to illustrate the destruction that resulted from the April 6 earthquake which can be viewed below.

Seattle Times covers the Vita Table dinner with Richard Wrangham

Check it - we got a nice little write-up today in the Seattle Times. Here is the online version. Apparently the good Doctor will be on KUOW tomorrow talking about his groundbreaking work and the dinner we are throwing in his honor.

Coffee is culture!

If you can't make the dinner tomorrow head down to Town Hall tonight to see his lecture.

TONIGHT: Vera Project Benefit @ Vita Capitol Hill Thursday, June 4th.

Potlatch after Sasquatch
TONIGHT!: Thursday June 4th. Breaking the Ban and giving it all away!
7pm - 10pm Caffe Vita
Capitol Hill. 1005 e Pike.

Featuring intimate sets by Grant Olsen of Arthur and Yu, Say Hi (solo), Mount Eerie/Phil Elverum, and Shawn Smith of Brad.



One Pot will be preparing and giving away bowls of thoughtfully prepared soup, Caffe Vita will be handing out mugs of their Farm Direct coffee, music will fill the cafe and pour out onto Pike Street and artist Ty Willman will be donating the proceeds from his new work. This region has a long history of "potlatch" gatherings; we might not be burning canoes or breaking coppers on June 4th but there certainly will be much offered in the way of song, food, and coffee.

$15/person. All proceeds go to The Vera Project. Tickets at the door.

pot·latch noun. A party or celebration that could involve extravagant or competitive giving and destruction of valued items.

Potlatch Ban. Potlatching was made illegal in Canada in 1885 and the United States in the late nineteenth century, largely at the urging of missionaries and government agents who considered it "a worse than useless custom," and found the flagrant generosity objectionable.

Vita Table: Dr. Richard Wrangham. June 9th.

the vita table continues with harvard anthropologist richard wrangham and his provocative new book, CATCHING FIRE: how cooking made us human.

did cooking – more than the use of tools or meat eating – push forward our evolution and make us human?

wrangham posits that the innovation of cooking food – breaking down its components to more digestible forms – is what unleashed sufficient energy and nutrients to make possible the fueling of the mighty human mind. he also delves fearlessly into controversial implications for the raw foods movement, the diet industry, our food labeling system, and even gender roles.

one pot, caffe vita, and kim ricketts will set a festive table amidst the towering bags of green coffee on capitol hill to welcome dr. wrangham in conversation and heavy feasting. a team of chefs including michael hebb, conor donahue (range, farralon), kurt timmermeister (kurtwood farms), and mark fuller (spring hill) will be cooking a seasonal meal in a neapolitan wood fired oven. renowned author greg atkinson, dr. andy mcshea and debra music from theo chocolate and michael hebb will launch into an in-depth conversation with dr. wrangham.

$45/person. includes a signed copy of catching fire. byo wine.
make a reservation here: http://www.brownpapertickets.com/event/69522
location: 1005 East Pike 7pm

The NY Times Gives Caffe Vita BIG LOVE!

June 2, 2009, 11:36 am
Caffeine Nation | The Buzz From Seattle
By Christine Muhlke



From Seattle, the birthplace of Starbucks, comes a cooler coffee company. Caffé Vita — one of the farm-direct, we-roast-our-own-organic-beans places to emerge from the Pacific Northwest in the last five years — has stayed true to the city’s indie spirit. First came a collaboration with One Pot.... keep reading here...

Vera Project Benefit @ Vita Thursday, June 4th.

Potlatch after Sasquatch
Thursday June 4th. Breaking the Ban and giving it all away!
7pm - 10pm Caffe Vita
Capitol Hill. 1005 e Pike.

Featuring intimate sets by Grant Olsen of Arthur and Yu, Say Hi (solo), Mount Eerie/Phil Elverum, and Shawn Smith of Brad.



One Pot will be preparing and giving away bowls of thoughtfully prepared soup, Caffe Vita will be handing out mugs of their Farm Direct coffee, music will fill the cafe and pour out onto Pike Street and artist Ty Willman will be donating the proceeds from his new work. This region has a long history of "potlatch" gatherings; we might not be burning canoes or breaking coppers on June 4th but there certainly will be much offered in the way of song, food, and coffee.

$15/person. All proceeds go to The Vera Project. Tickets at the door.

pot·latch noun. A party or celebration that could involve extravagant or competitive giving and destruction of valued items.

Potlatch Ban. Potlatching was made illegal in Canada in 1885 and the United States in the late nineteenth century, largely at the urging of missionaries and government agents who considered it "a worse than useless custom," and found the flagrant generosity objectionable.

Caffe Vita Farm Direct on KCTS channel 9

Our green coffee buyer and lead roaster Mason Sager takes KCTS Channel 9 on a little tour through the world of Caffe Vita!

Caffe Vita & Caffé Fioré @ Sasquatch in Pictures!

The sun was sweltering and our sunburns left of dazed and confused. All in the name of good music and good coffee!

New Vita shirt Released: The Flower.

The Life of a Coffee Seed Round II: The Flower. Click to order.

Caffe Vita commissioned local artist Robert Mercer to investigate the curious life of the coffee plant, from seedling to cherry ripe fruit. The result is a series of three limited edition t-shirts. We are excited to announce and release the second in the series: The Flower. Up next... The Cherry

Robert Mercer has drawn and designed many of the things we see daily in the Northwest, but we were deeply inspired by the illustrations he crafted for recording artists The Shins and their album Wincing The Night Away. We asked Robert to use a similar style of obsessive almost-psychedelic illustration while considering the life of a coffee seed. The result is three evocative prints that clearly tell the journey of the plant.

$15 for dark brown T
available at all five VITA locations (starting may 20th) and online at www.caffevita.com

Our collaborator One Pot gets some nice coverage on John Richards TV show.

The Local Music Show visits with Chase Jarvis and Michael Hebb, creators of Songs for Eating and Drinking, an event that brings together local musicians over food, drink, and music. Performers include Stone Gossard and Barb Ireland, Head Like a Kite, and Geologic from Blue Scholars.

Check out all the videos at www.songsforeatinganddrinking.com