Coffee at restaurants is by and large bad. Really, really bad. Like, how-did-your-palate-create-this-amazing-food-but-not-realize-this-coffee-is-garbage bad. There are certainly exceptions, many of which have been covered on Sprudge, with great joy might I add. But this disconnect has led to many coffee folks to team up with chefs for one-off coffee pairing pop-up dinners, showcasing how well coffee can work both as a compliment and as an ingredient in a beautiful dining experience. Continuing in this tradition, Sprudgie Award-winning Narrative Coffee is joining forces with Chef Cody Castiglia this Friday, March 16th in Snohomish, Washington, and they are doing things a little different.

The chef/owner of Della Terra, Chef Castiglia will bring his focus on local, seasonally available ingredients for the four-course dinner and will be utilizing coffee in fun ways to compliment the dishes he creates. For the coffee pairings, Narrative Coffee owner Maxwell Mooney will be acting as coffee somm and is exploring an oft-overlooked but necessary expression of coffee for nighttime dining: decaf. Along with one caffeinated coffee “of a rare variety,” per Narrative’s Facebook post about the event, Mooney will be using three different uncaffeinated coffees, including both an ethyl acetate and a Swiss Water Processed decaf from Huila, Colombia, as well as a Swiss Water naturally processed Yirgacheffe.

Without giving away too many secrets about what he has in store for the evening, Mooney tells Sprudge that he plans on implementing some of his barista competition skills to “[pull] out some classic signature drink making techniques throughout” the night.

On the dinner’s decaf focus, Mooney had this to say:

We are just having fun exploring how coffee and food can interact beyond the typical breakfast/brunch setting. Caffeine is a real barrier to enjoying coffee later in the day, so why not use some of the amazing decaf coffees that are available out there to help push coffee out of the box folks usually put it in?

It all happens tomorrow night, at The Hungry Pelican in Snohomish, WA, starting at 6:30pm. Tickets for the coffee dinner are $69 per person and are available for purchase here.

Zac Cadwalader is the news editor at Sprudge Media Network and a staff writer based in Dallas. Read more Zac Cadwalader on Sprudge.

*top image via Narrative Coffee

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