Café Olli: a bread shop that also serves dinner

Café Olli on NE MLK in King tends to puzzle anyone who files it as a bakery, right up until they spot the pizza oven. It's a restaurant that also runs a naturally leavened bread program, and people often ask how to visit without missing either half. The answer is to do both, so buy the country loaf and then stay for a plate.

Siobhan Speirits and Taylor Manning opened Café Olli in 2021 after working in New York kitchens and spending time at Ava Gene's and Coquine in Portland. Speirits leads bread and pastry and Manning runs the savory kitchen, with pasta, wood-fired pizza and dinner. It started as a worker-minded all-day café and is now a restaurant that bakes, with employee ownership in the mix. A sister spot, Ollini, sits across the parking lot for weekends when the main dining room fills up, and the loaf and lunch are both in the main building.

A huge wood-fired brick oven sits in the middle of the dining room, which is bright and a little rustic, and on nice mornings the patio fills with dogs and regulars. Loaves line the counter with dark, craggy crusts and the peel marks showing. The pastry case holds blonde Danishes piled with potato, bacon, sour cream and shaved cheese, knotted cardamom buns with sugar in the folds, and whatever Speirits decided to bake that day. It's tucked a little off the boulevard, and the air smells like bread and pizza at the same time.

Start with the bread. The country loaf is the one to get, dark-crusted and sometimes dusted with sesame, and you can take it home in paper if you aren't staying, or have it with the toasts and sandwiches if you are. Ask for it by name. If another naturally leavened loaf is on the rack that day, it's a fine second, but get the country loaf first.

Speirits puts real effort into the pastry too. The potato-bacon-sour cream Danish is the one for pastry that eats like breakfast, with golden laminated dough and a creamy, salty middle, and the cardamom bun is what to get for spice and soft layers when you're already holding a loaf. On weekends, Ollini across the parking lot is a smaller bakery counter with croissants, cookies, monkey bread and pastel de nata, which sell out first, so if the main dining room is packed and you only came for bread and coffee, go there. If you're staying to eat, the restaurant side is pizza and pasta, and since the people fermenting the loaf are cooking the rest of the day too, the bread tastes like it came out of a working kitchen.

Decide before you park whether you're grabbing a loaf or staying to eat, because weekend mornings fill up with a restaurant crowd. If you only want bread, go to the counter, get the country loaf, look over the pastry case, and leave before you're stuck in a wait you didn't plan for. If you're staying, sit near the oven. Regulars come back because the naturally leavened bread comes with a whole restaurant attached. Take the loaf home, and eat the Danish in the car if you have to.

The essentials are on the Café Olli page.