Its a little strange when you see one of your favorite coffee shop on the Food Network.
Now I tend to think of Seattle as this little city that doesn’t get much attention in the media. I mean pick just about any show on the Food Network. Even though Seattle has great restaurants, they barely seem to feature any of them. Or look at sitcoms, other than Frasier, I can’t really think of any sitcom that is based in Seattle. Or what about movies? Other than Sleepless, and I think Double Jeopardy, I am really hard pressed to count off movies that are supposed to have taken place in Seattle. So you can understand, that when I saw Top Pot Donuts on TV, I thought that was exciting.
Now what was not exciting was that on the show, the only featured the new, modern store located downtown on 5th Avenue and didn’t even mention the flagship store, the one located on Summit Avenue up on Capital Hill which I personally think is the coolest. Top Pot also have three other stores, one up on Queen Ann, one in Bellevue and one in Wedgwood. I haven’t been to either of these three, but I have driven by the one on Queen Ann.
I thought the story of how top pot actually got its name was rather fascinating. The two founders bought this huge old sign for a Chinese Restaurant called Topspot. They lugged the sign home and left it sitting out in the back for four years. By then the s had fallen off and I guess they liked the ‘new’ sign, Top pot. So the name stuck. You can actually see this sign if you go to the original shop… and I think the Food Network should have shown the sign when they were doing the Top Pot segment… and especially since they did actually mention the story behind how Top Pot got its name…
Although Top Pot is really famous for their doughnuts, they do actually roast their own coffee beans. And they do a good job too… The blend that they use for the espresso drinks is their El Presidente blend which they describe as a medium roast blend made with beans from Mexico, Peru, Bolivia and Papua New Guinea… I didn’t realize that Papua New Guinea grew coffee…
I also do think they make the best doughnuts in the Seattle area*. That plus the fact that they also serve great coffee is the major reason that I think the Top Pot location on Summit Ave is always packed… especially on weekends. Besides, I really like the atmosphere in the place… which is also pretty welcoming. They have huge bookshelves that run from floor to ceiling on the North and south sides of the shop and the lighting is soft and makes for really nice long exposure photography. And the free Wi-Fi is a bonus!
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*As an aside, I think some would want to argue that Mighty O donuts are the best in Seattle, but I don’t know if I would agree yet. I have only eaten one Mighty O donut and I really wasn’t impressed at all but I also don’t want to make any comparisons until I have had a chance to sample a few other variety of Mighty O donuts so for now I am simply going to say that in Top Pot donuts make the best doughnuts I have eaten in Seattle.
