I freely admit it – during my family’s most recent visit to our ancestral home of Astoria, Oregon, I met a girl who swept me off my feet. Now, before you start typing out a message to my wife telling her what a no good bum you’ve always known I was, let me clarify something, my Astoria girl is 130 years old – or at least the outside of her is.

She makes her home out on the pier in the old J.O. Hanthorn Cannery building at the foot of 39th Street in Astoria; the site of the former Bumble Bee Seafoods cold storage facility.

I look for the passage just off center to the building’s right side, follow it toward the back of the building, and it leads me right to her door.

From the first time I saw her it was love at first sight. Even in the shadowy light, I could tell in a moment that she had it all – a jaunty yet distinctive style, a memorable face, a welcoming attitude; everything I have always looked for in a cafe. (You knew I was writing about a cafe, right?)

Meet the Coffee Girl, a unique little Astoria cafe serving up the popular, modern variations of the same basic beverage that sustained thousands of cannery workers through their long, often cold and rain-soaked shifts for the many decades when salmon was king and the Columbia river was the throne room.

The cafe itself is actually not in the original cannery canteen, the site of which is a mere few yards distant, but in a much more pleasing location for its present-day activities (more on that in a moment). However the owner and staff of the Coffee Girl are ever-mindful of the memories and traditions of the place in which their cafe makes its home – the very walls tell its story.

While some of the decor is “imported”…

…other parts of it have been present here since long before the Coffee Girl’s baristas were even born.

And speaking of those baristas – they call themselves the coffee girls. Friendly and hospitable, a bit fiesty, charmingly quirky, and unquestionably among the finest at their craft I have ever previously encountered. They don’t just make and serve coffee (as well as an assortment of pastries and more substantial dishes), they create works of art and sublime beauty. Doubt my words?

Allow me to present Exhibit A – my favorite coffee drink: the espresso con panna a la Coffee Girl. This seemingly simple drink is all too often beyond the technical reach of many baristas, sometimes even requiring an explanation from me as to just what it is. Not so here. Not only do they know it, they lovingly craft it into something not only delicious but of sublime physical beauty as well – the sign of true mastery in any culinary activity.

Sitting at a table by the window, sipping the combination of robust hot coffee mingling with the cool sweet whipped cream, and looking out at the adjacent Columbia River, such a profound feeling of peace and contentment envoloped me that I could only silently muse on the last two lines of Coleridge’s Kubla Khan: “For he on honey-dew hath fed, / And drunk the milk of Paradise.”

Of course, should contemplating Romantic verse not be your strong suit, step through the back door and out onto the “deck” for a better view of the mighty Columbia and one of the Coffee Girl’s outdoor tables.

In all the cafes I have visited throughout the world, I have never, anywhere, known one to offer such a spectacular view of one of nature’s greatest marvels.

As the pilings upon which the pier rests are sunk down deep, reportedly all the way into the solid rock below the river’s bottom, no vibration is felt anywhere on the pier, making it a spectacular location to set up a tripod for a camera or spotting scope. As the gulls, terns, cormorants, and herons fly by the elevated pier at eye level, a better location for bird watching, photography, and digiscoping can scarcely be imagined (particularly in light of the easy proximity to such a superb offerings of food, drink, and hospitality).

So the next time you visit Astoria, put it down in your list of things to do under the category of “moral imperatives” to visit the Coffee Girl. Order your favorite beverage, pause a moment upon its completion to appreciate its beauty, and find a table to your liking – be it inside or out. Sit, sip, relax; let the rest of the world dissolve into a distant, faintly remembered dream – even if only for a few all-too-brief moments. For in partaking of the Coffee Girl’s hospitality, you have made a new friend whom you shall never forget.