Sister’s Brew was once located at 218 S. Main St., but on the first of March, Sister’s Brew relocated and Café Artista opened as Moscow’s newest coffee shop two weeks later. The shop is owned by Bev and Lisa Bafus, a mother and daughter team.
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Visiting scholar Kiuwai Chu sips coffee at Cafe Artista coffee shop on Main St. in downtown Moscow. Cafe Artista now occupies the previous downtown Sister’s Brew venue.
“We heard this place was for sale late last summer. And so we had been thinking about the idea both here and other places,” Bev Bafus said. “And so my daughter and I went to the Seattle Barista Academy in Seattle in December and we went through the academy and graduated because we decided to invest in ourselves first and know what we were doing.”
Café Artista reorganized and redecorated the café during the two-week period before the store opened.
“A lot of the stuff was here so we started out with the bones of the stuff that Sister’s Brew had.” Bev said. “And a lot of the decorating is my daughter — she’s an artist. She’s just got this quirky eye for stuff.”
A major feature for Café Artista is local art. There is a space in the café that sells goods from local artists such as pots and jewelry. The café will eventually have gallery space that rotates between different artists.
“Our big future plan is to have gallery space for local artists especially young artists, college students and high school students that need a foot in the door and experience showing somewhere,” Lisa Bafus said.
Artists interested in having their art shown at the café should talk to whoever is on duty at the register. The front counter will have applications for artists who should bring sample pieces of art with them. In order to be displayed, artists’ pieces will have to be approved by the owners.
Café Artista also incorporates art into their coffee in the form of latté art. Latte art is a method of preparing coffee that results in a design or pattern on the top of the cup.
“Right now, we are mostly hearts and rosettes,” Lisa said.
Another attraction to Café Artista is Stumptown coffee, which originated in the Portland-Seattle area.
“We get our coffee from the Seattle roastery and we get it within a day of roasting, so it’s always really fresh,” Bev said. “And Stumptown has a unique style and flavor, people recognize it and if they know Stumptown they are really excited to hear that Stumptown is in Moscow.”
The café also offers three different kinds of drip coffee: a Hairbender, which is Stumptown’s basic blend, decaf and a single-origin coffee. The varietal that is offered changes every week.
“Because Stumptown does direct trade with their farmers, they know who their farmers are,” Bev said. “On a lot of their varietals, right on the bag you’ll see the longitude and latitude of where they are.”
Aleya Ericson can be reached at [email protected]