The Coffee Shop by Hammerhead Coffee Roasters

Hammerhead has roasted in Bellingham since 2007, and this East Holly Street shop is where you drink the coffee rather than buy the bag. The sourcing is the part worth knowing: the company buys only Fair Trade and organic certified green coffee, most of it from small grower cooperatives, which is a narrower buying policy than most roasters this size are willing to commit to.

The food is not an afterthought either. Breakfast and lunch run all day rather than stopping at eleven, and the thing to order is a biscuit sandwich, which comes in a vegan version too. It is the rare cafe where the kitchen and the roasting program are both the point.

If you want to take the place home with you, Velvet Elvis is the roast to carry out. That is the advantage of drinking at a roaster's own counter rather than at a cafe pouring somebody else's beans: what you liked in the cup is available by the bag at the same till.

Everything shuts at 3pm, kitchen and counter together, which puts it in the middle of the Bellingham pack rather than at either end. Downtown parking is metered and Holly Street is busiest on Saturday mornings, so a weekday visit is the calmer one.