Coffee and pastries

Mix Sweet Shop café and bakery: 57 N Main St
Ashland OR 97520; tel. (541) 488-9885

Ken's Artisan Bakery: 338 NW 21st Avenue, Portland OR 97209; tel. 503.248.2202

HOORAY! ASHLAND NOW HAS really good coffee and croissants, a necessary combination that's been lacking until now. Mix is on a strategic corner down by the triangle where the Lithia water flows (yes, that's made a long-desired reappearance); it's run by the pastry chef of the restaurant Amuse whose founding chef, a Berkeleyan, made his adolescent run through the kitchen of Chez Panisse quite a few years back; it serves Portland's Stumptown Coffee with which it makes absolutely delicious caffè latte; and all the pastries are made on site, from excellent ingredients, and baked until they have both color and flavor.

We stopped in for a latte to go yesterday morning, and I mentioned we were on our way to Portland, to visit Ken's. "One of the best there is," said the proprietor of Mix.

Ken's, in Portland, has the best bread in town, and that's saying a lot: Pearl, running a close race, is also an excellent baker of bread. Ken's a little farther from our digs, but unlike Pearl Ken's also bakes canalés, those soft, crunchy, dark, pale, sweet, solid teacakes that are quite unique. (Insinuating, too: a fascinating blog of three years ago collected quite a number of reponses from canalé fans around the world.)


Last month for my birthday I was given an ideal present, a whole box of canelés, a couple of dozen I think: fortunately, they hold well; they needn't be eaten only fresh. Today we brought a half dozen home, with our bread; after supper — a delicious potato salad with sweet onion and tasty homemade vinegar — we had them with our tea. The Cubs lost, 4-3, but the canalés helped dull the sorrow.