Duane Sorenson is making it his personal mission to transform how New Yorkers drink coffee; plus, a walking tour of Seattle’s best coffee culture.

Stumptown is coming to New York and owner Duane Sorenson is making it his personal mission to transform the city’s coffee-drinking habits.

This past weekend’s edition of New York Restaurants, part of New York magazine, featured a sit-down with the foul-mouthed Sorenson to discuss his move to the Big Apple and his almost religious fervor for coffee.

“This town is ridiculous,” he told the magazine of his impression of the city’s current coffee culture. “Make a good cup of coffee for your neighbor, f—!”

Sorenson’s mission is not just drinking coffee; it’s experiencing it for the very essence of what it’s worth. With his five cafes, two café-roasteries, and a stand-alone roastery back home in Portland, Sorenson has helped make fair trade coffee part of the Pacific Northwest’s landscape.

After settling into an apartment in Brooklyn earlier this year, Sorenson’s plan to spread the caffeinated good news will begin with the opening of a new roastery in Red Hook next month. The first New York Stumptown café is slated to open sometime this summer in the Ace Hotel at 29th Street and Broadway.

Until then, if you live or travel in New York, you can check out Sorenson’s influence at Café Pedlar in Cobble Hill. Sorenson opened the café with the owners of Frankies Spuntino. If you want to read more of Sorenson’s profile, complete with the uncensored expletives, click here.

Seattle stays put

We go next from Pac Northwesterners invading the East Coast to Pac Northwesterners staying home and showing off coffee culture in their own backyard.

A company called Savor Seattle food tours has introduced a new walking tour known as the Coffee Bites and Sites Tour. The tour takes visitors on a trip around the city to experience Seattle’s best-known contribution to the world (well, other than Nirvana and Bill Gates) in all of its imaginable forms.

The 2 and ½ hour tour takes guests to the top of the Seattle Space Needle to sample mocha-brazed short ribs, to the Cheese Cellar for a bite of coffee-rubbed cheese, to the Chocolate Box on Pine Street to sample coffee and chocolate, and to The Confectional in Pike Place Market for a bite of mocha cheesecake. Guests will also get some “coffee education” at two stops along the way including, ahem, Starbucks.

The tour runs March through December, Wednesdays through Saturdays, and will set you back about $64.00, food and drinks included. To find out more, check out Savor Seattle’s website.

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