The Absolute Best Coffee in Portland, Maine

The Portland, Maine, that Mary Allen Lindemann and Alan Spear gambled on, way back in 1994, was a very different city than the Portland, Maine, we know today.

When the duo opened their first coffee shop on a then less-than-popular stretch of Congress Street (which they will tell you used to be known colloquially as the Porn District), the downtown of Maine's largest city was dangerously close to half-empty, saddled with a now-unimaginable 40% vacancy rate. There was no bright future assured, no sure thing to point toward — this was a time when the average American simply did not do downtown. Not unless absolutely necessary.

However, Lindemann and Spear believed. Not just in their vision but in Portland itself. So, they flung open the doors to Coffee By Design, and nearly 30 years later, it remains one of the city's favorite coffee providers. And it's easy to see why once you get your hands on its marvelously complex beans that make for a crisp, fruity, and utterly delicious sip.

To say that Coffee By Design takes sourcing seriously is putting it mildly; their passion for sustainability, specifically for fair wages for growers, is up there with some of the best-known industry leaders. In 2016, CBD, which is what plenty of people seem to call them around here, joined a growing group of coffee roasters certified as B Corporations, which are expected to adhere to strict standards of accountability in matters of social and environmental responsibility.

There are now four Coffee By Design shops in the area, which is plenty, considering Portland's modest size, and my visit to their Diamond Street flagship, out in an industrial corner of the city's East End, was just one of the stops I would be making that day, as part of my research for the next edition of Food & Wine's Best Coffee in Every State survey.

As you might expect from a city with so many dark, cold days on the annual calendar, there's no shortage of coffee in Portland. But who is brewing it best? To answer that question, I scheduled stops at five prominent local roasters: Tandem Coffee, Coffee by Design, Bard Coffee, Speckled Ax, and Rwanda Bean, as well as the following shops where fine coffee was said to be sold: Coffee ME Up, Union Bagel, and Rose Foods.

What makes a winner? You can read more on the process here and here, but briefly: I will typically visit anonymously, preferring to experience each shop the way any consumer would. I will, however, order as many drinks as I can without attracting too much attention, in order to learn as much as possible. Often, and this was frequently the case in Portland, these visits are mere spot checks on places I'm already quite familiar with — in some cases, I'll have visited many times before. After making all the stops in one memorable and educational day, here are the four I'd recommend most highly, right now.

Tandem Coffee

As one of the most fashionable roasters in New England, Tandem Coffee is the one pretty much everybody in the coffee industry under the age of 40 will immediately reference when you talk about caffeine in Maine. This labor of love from Blue Bottle grads Will and Kathleen Pratt has been a star of the Portland scene since 2012. While the vintage service station on Congress Street is far and away the most popular place for Tandem's loyal fans — both local and visiting from elsewhere — to pay tribute, I prefer the diminutive cafe space inside Tandem's modest, East End roasting plant.

Here, underneath the big Colonial-style windows, soaking up the morning light if you're lucky, you feel as if you're part of the family, rather than unwitting fodder for somebody's Instagram feed, not that there's anything wrong with that. The choices on the occasion of my visit were simple, beginning with a cup of the Stoker, the "kinda dark" blend, designed as a sort of evangelistic tool, an outstretched hand to Dunkin'-obsessed New Englanders. This is a thoroughly enjoyable, very straightforward coffee, one of the most balanced I've tried from the new wave of dark-ish roasts, and I had plenty of time to think about how much I liked the stuff while the conscientious barista worked to dial in the day's espresso, a Colombian from estimable producer Astrid Medina. Three tries later, I'd say both my shot and cappuccino came out fine, if still short of the mark. I'd have happily waited around for perfection, in order to experience what was clearly a spectacular coffee at its very best, but the morning rush had already begun.

Coffee by Design

So close to Tandem's East End roastery you could throw a coffee bean and hit one from the other, CBD's sizable Diamond Street flagship is already a hive of activity around nine o'clock on a Monday morning. Stepping in here is like stepping back a decade or more, in terms of shop design — concrete floors, accent walls in warm, rich 1990s tones, an abundance of local art on the walls. (This location only opened in 2014, as it happens.) There is nothing old-fashioned, however, about some of the coffees — the Finca El Llano Colombian was one of the finest cups of coffee I have tried.

Bard Coffee

This is easily the best-located coffee roaster and cafe operation for visitors, right in the city's Old Port district at the heart of absolutely everything. I long ago lost track of how many times I've stepped inside this shop and cannot recall a time when I didn't leave satisfied. Today was no exception, though here, for the first time that day, espresso outshone cups of coffee (I tried two, and while they were absolutely fine, neither was really competing with what I'd just had.) After years of experience, Bard remains one of the city's most dependable destinations for a proper espresso drink.

Speckled Axe

For something different (a difficult task in the coffee world), there's nothing better than a cup from Speckled Axe. The shop proudly serves wood-roasted coffee made in its vintage Petroncini, which more than signals that this is a place that takes coffee very, very seriously. Your best bet here is to drink it black. A simple Americano will both leave you satisfied and allow you to appreciate the complex flavors brought out by the flames. If you must, go for just a touch of milk in the cortado, which still allows its single origin roasts to be the star of the show.

Editor's Note: The author's original selection included Little Woodfords, a shop that has since closed.