Tandem Coffee Roasters

Tandem's Anderson Street site in East Bayside is the working half of the business — the roastery, with a cafe attached. The room is plainer than the Congress Street bakery: concrete, sacks of green coffee, the roaster itself visible and often running. For anyone who cares how coffee is made rather than only how it tastes, it is the more interesting of the two.

The location is what earns it a separate listing. East Bayside is Portland's brewing district — Rising Tide, Austin Street, Lone Pine and a cluster of distilleries and cideries sit within a few blocks. It is a genuinely enjoyable neighbourhood to spend an afternoon in and a difficult one to spend it in sober, because almost every door leads to a taproom. Having a proper coffee roaster in the middle of it, alcohol-free by definition, gives a non-drinker somewhere to be that is not simply the corner of someone else's brewery.

The coffee is the same product as the West End bakery — Tandem roasts everything here — served without the pastry programme that draws the queues across town. Hours run 7am to 1pm Monday through Saturday, closed Sunday, so it opens an hour earlier than the bakery and shuts at the same time.

The same honest caveat applies as to any Portland cafe: this covers mornings, and Portland's real gap for non-drinkers is the evening. But if you are staying in East Bayside, or working through a day in the brewery district with people who are drinking, a well-run roastery a few doors down is a more useful thing to know about than another bar that will make you a lime and soda. It is also one of the few places in East Bayside where you can sit for an hour without anyone assuming you are between taprooms.