Coffee Klatch Gathering over favorite brew comforts many Mainers

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You have a coffee shop?” the woman on the phone, clearly a tourist, asked Bill Hahn the first summer he owned the Cedar Crest Motel and Coffee Shop in Camden.

“Yes,” he answered.

“Do you have latte?” she asked, pronouncing it “lahhh-tay.”

“Nope,” Hahn replied. “But we do have scrambled eggs.”

Six years later, Hahn is considering adding latte to the lineup, but for now, Cedar Crest is a coffee shop in the old-fashioned sense of the word, a place where friendly waitresses serve two varieties of coffee – regular or decaf – in heavy, brown ceramic mugs. It’s an institution, a favorite of retirees who live in the apartment complex across the street, and a place where locals stop for breakfast after church on Sunday.

“It’s a habit,” Hahn said on a recent afternoon, as the lunch crowd tapered off in the knotty pine dining room with its high-backed booths and varnished tables.

And it’s a treat. According to the Specialty Coffee Association of America, Americans drink 300 million cups of coffee a day, 75 percent of which are brewed at home. For the other 25 percent, there are more options than ever.

Whether your ideal cup is a 25-cent mug of Folgers or a $3.95 venti cappuccino with a shot of caramel syrup and dollop of whipped cream, there’s a cafe, coffee shop, barrista or waitress ready to serve it up your way.

It hasn’t always been this way, especially in Maine. Sue Hamlett of Orono, a Montreal native, made “about a million cappuccinos” at the bookstore-cafe where she worked while studying at McGill University.

When she moved to Orono in 1985, she arrived in the middle of the night, thinking, “Oh my God, where am I? Am I ever going to find coffee again?”

She found a cappuccino maker gathering dust in a corner of the Bear’s Den, a popular University of Maine hangout at the time. No one knew how to use it.

These days, Hamlett isn’t much of a coffee drinker. But on a recent morning, she and her husband, Paul Riechmann, met up at The Store-Ampersand for a cup of decaf.

“We still like it, and it’s sort of reassuring,” Riechmann said.

“There’s a ritual involved in getting your coffee, even if there’s no drug involved,” Hamlett added, laughing.

Deborah Blease, an Ampersand regular who had a meeting with Riechmann earlier that morning, offered another explanation.

“I quit drinking coffee once, and after I got over the initial shock of the first couple of days, I didn’t know what to do with all this extra time in the morning,” Blease said. “It’s a social addiction.”

There are two types of coffee drinkers: the true aficionado and the social drinker. For the former, good coffee is a non-negotiable part of the cafe scene. She’s not going to meet her friends over percolated Hills Brothers. She’ll have a dark-as-night French roast, black, thank you very much. If it’s locally roasted, so much the better.

The latter is a little more easygoing. He may appreciate fine coffee, but it’s more about the overall experience than the origin of the beans and the darkness of the roast.

Patrick Reilley is a hybrid of the two. The San Francisco native remembers the vibrancy of the cafes in the North Beach neighborhood and the scent of coffee roasting as he crossed the Bay Bridge. When he and his wife, Susanne Ward, moved to Rockland, they wanted a place to hang out, drink coffee, read a book and only spend a few bucks. They opened Second Read, a place where people do just that, 15 years ago.

At the time, most Americans considered coffee a caffeinated beverage that helped people get through the day. No more, no less. When Starbucks began its national marketing blitz, the concept of coffee as lifestyle took off.

“The coffee shop, it’s that third place – not home, not work – that you can meet people,” Reilley said. “That’s a huge part of the success of Second Read. People could meet and interact. That just didn’t really exist here except for bars.”

In Belfast, as in Rockland, coffee culture has taken a firm hold at such hangouts as Bell the Cat and The Gothic.

On a recent, overcast afternoon in The Gothic, a pair of tie-wearing lawyers chatted, two women tried to choose between cappuccinos and lattes, and a college freshman with anti-Bush buttons on her purse greeted a local merchant sitting in the corner.

At a small table a bit out of the fray, a mother and daughter sipped coffee, ate muffins and read The New York Times. They make a daily ritual of it.

“To me, personally, the coffee isn’t very important,” said the daughter, who wishes to remain anonymous. “They have a very nice selection, but that’s not what it’s about. I think it’s just the individual touch.”

“You need it,” her mother added. “You really need it.”

“It’s important for the community,” the daughter replied.

And sometimes, the sense of community is equally important. Just ask Lori MacManus, Suzie Worcester and Elva Gurney, who live in the same retirement complex in Orono. They came into Bangor to pick up their prescriptions at Miller Drug and stopped into Frank’s Bake Shop for coffee and homemade doughnuts.

“I love coffee shops,” Gurney, 62, said. “The atmosphere, being together with other people, and of course the food. … We all live by ourselves, so it’s not just about the coffee.”

“It’s just nice to get together and be out on a beautiful day,” Worcester, 65, added.

They like to watch people, and when they’re not at Frank’s, they could be on an outing to the coast, leaf-peeping, or just visiting family. Usually, one of the women treats the others to breakfast. And they’ll all admit, there’s something special about sharing stories over a cup of coffee.

“If there’s a coffee place, I’m usually headed for it,” Gurney said.

Kristen Andresen can be reached at 990-8287 and kandresen@bangordailynews.net.

Coffee stars

This is by no means a comprehensive list, but here are a few of our favorite coffee spots:

Aurora Provisions, 64 Pine St., Portland, 871-9060

Bell the Cat, Renys Plaza, Belfast, 338-2735

Cafe de la Place, 285 Main St., Madawaska, 728-0944

Cedar Crest Coffeeshop, 115 Elm St., Camden, 236-4839

Coffee by Design, 67 India St., Portland, 879-2233

The Cup and Easel, 104 East Main St., Dover Foxcroft, 564-7101

Frank’s Bake Shop, 199 State St., Bangor, 947-4594

The Gothic, 108 Main St., Belfast, 338-4933

Opera House Cafe, 27 Cottage St., Bar Harbor, 288-3509

Second Read, 328 Main St., Rockland, 594-4123

South By Southwest Java Co., 31 Elm St., Camden, 236-7025

The Store-Ampersand, Mill Street, Orono, 866-4110

The Vault Cafe, 74 Hammond St., Bangor 262-9966

Coffee Talk

We’d love to hear about your favorite coffee shop. Send a brief letter to Kristen Andresen, Bangor Daily News, P.O. Box 1329, Bangor 04402-1329, or by e-mail to kandresen@bangordailynews.net.

We’ll publish your responses in a future edition of the Bangor Daily News.