Cafe Red

Cafe Red began in August 2015 as an ice cream tricycle that Jesiah Wurtz and Haley Williams retrofitted into a mobile coffee stand. After a storm damaged it in 2016 they moved into this corner building beside the east side of the Othello light rail station, once home to the Whistle Stop Co-op, now painted red and gray with COFFEE letters on the roof. When it reopened in April 2022 after pandemic closures, the owners moved the menu from vegetarian to fully vegan.

The coffee is Fulcrum, a Seattle roaster, and the cafe's own menu says so. Fulcrum also supplies Zeitgeist, written up separately in this directory. The drink to order is the Oatnilla, a cold brew with oat milk and organic vanilla that The Infatuation picked out in 2022, and the current menu adds an Oatnilla Cannella, a cannella latte and a chagaccino, plus a London Fog, masala chai and turmeric ginger chai.

Breakfast is the menu: chorizo, veggie and bacon breakfast burritos, pesto and sausage breakfast sandwiches, avocado toast, an avocado hash brown and a mac'n'cheez, with gluten free versions of several and Haley's Comets cookies in chocolate peanut butter and almond cranberry. The cafe calls it breakfast fueled by plants. Much of the seating is on a covered patio under a wooden pergola, with orange metal chairs, a long bar and a big Cafe Red mural.

Hours are 7am to 2pm weekdays and 8am to 2pm on weekends. From May through October the patio hosts a jazz night every first Wednesday from 7pm to 10pm. The cafe runs a community gift card customers can add to, which in 2022 covered more than $2,000 of food and drink for unhoused and low income neighbors. Order ahead in the cafe's app, or come by light rail.