While the statement in the window states that Café Bambino has been serving Ballard since 1928, the café actually opened in 1997. Originally serving wood-roasted espressos imported from Italy, Café Bambino offered a more traditional Italian espresso experience to the neighborhood customers, in line with their Art Deco window lettering. Since the new owners, Jake and Gabby, took over in the fall of 2025, they’ve made some slight changes to the menu to cater to a modern coffee crowd while still retaining classic roasts that their customers already know and love. During a photo shoot, La Marocco noticed something special—their Linea Classic was manufactured in 2002, making it a prime candidate for True Artisan Club.
Tell us a bit about how you and Gabby came to be the owners of Café Bambino.
I (Jake) was the owner and operator of a local Seattle coffee roasting company called Looking Homeward. We closed it down in the fall of 2022 and went back into the work-force. I started to feel the itch for business ownership and a new project at the beginning of 2025 and we began searching for a coffee shop to purchase. The previous owners of Cafe Bambino reached out during our search and we got acquainted. Throughout last summer we did our due-diligence and formulated our changeover plan. Our offer was approved in September and we took over on October 1st! We wanted a space for community, quality, and to push our small-business minded philosophies; Cafe Bambino had all of these opportunities in large quantities. The established customer base has been coming to the cafe basically since opening in 1997!
What is it about Café Bambino that drew you in originally?
Honestly: community, location, and value add. We were looking at coffee shops in a radius to our home, with a strong community built in, that we could create value with our combined 35 years of coffee experience. Cafe Bambino is a long loved coffee shop that was ready for us to pull it into our version of third wave coffee.
How have you approached the coffee program at Café Bambino after taking over?
With a sledgehammer! Traditionally, Cafe Bambino sourced coffee from a wood-fired coffee roasting company in Italy. Our customers have grown to expect a particular flavor profile; knowing this we sourced a similar local coffee from Mr. Espresso in Oakland. To accompany this more traditional dark roast option we serve a medium roast coffee from Camellia Coffee in my home-town of Sacramento. Camellia’s Director of Coffee is my former employee when I was the Head Roaster at Temple Coffee. Together we roasted millions of pounds of coffee and we speak the same roasting language. The blend we serve is a excellent blend of South American and African coffees.
Our Batch program was built from the ground up and rotates quarterly from roasters across the country. Each quarter we request samples from a major region of the country (NE, NW, SW, SE) and taste through coffees from our friends and roasters we are fans of! Since October we have served: Camellia Coffee’s Prism, Color Coffee Roasters’ Primary, Gloom Coffee Roasters’ Doom, and Madcap Coffee’s Bolt. Since Gabby and I are both batch coffee drinks in our personal life, our goal is to have the best batch coffee in Seattle. While that goal is superfluous, we also will have something new and tasty on our menu every season.
We also started a special weekend nights program apply called Bambino Nights that we get to have a lot of fun with, sourcing coffees specifically for Chemex. We are bringing in coffees from Gabby’s day-job travels with Ally Coffee Importers. Since January we have served more than 30 coffee roasters from across the globe! Australia, Europe, South America, North America (Obviously); maybe a stretch goal for our menu is to get coffees from Africa & Asia.
What is it like to inherit a 24-year-old espresso machine?
It can keep me up at night but it’s a throwback to my early barista days in the mid-2000’s. My first specialty machine was a fairly new Linea in 2007; but in 2026 we take a lot of care of our machine in order to keep it running for the foreseeable future. We have it maintanenced every six months and I work in the shop most days so I can keep an eye on it throughout each day.
Our plan is to move our Linea to our training lab once we build it and replace it at Bambino with a new La Marzocco machine when the time comes.
How does the history of this espresso machine contribute to the neighborhood vibes of Café Bambino?
One of our favorite customers, Dave, has had 1-3 espressos from our Linea nearly every day since it was installed in 2002 (estimating 16215 espresso shots served to Dave). That level of consistency on both sides of the relationship is amazing. Because our Linea is consistent, and reliable, we can keep our regulars like Dave, Ed, and Kip coming back day after day knowing the level of quality they will receive in their espresso.
What does the Ballard neighborhood mean to you?
Ballard is such a special neighborhood for Seattle, but also for us individually. Ballard is the first neighborhood I lived in when I moved to Seattle; so being back here in Ballard serving our community delicious coffee is very special. With Cafe Bambino being off the main strip in Ballard we really get to serve the community that lives here in the neighborhood. We get to see the day to day lives of Ballard, all the triumphs and the defeats. It makes me feel like a part of a larger community than just Bambino.
What does Café Bambino mean to the neighborhood?
Cafe Bambino means something different to each person who visits us. The regulars that have been coming since we opened in 1997 see Bambino as an extension of their living rooms. A true Third Place where they can commune with friends, family, and strangers (friends they haven’t made yet). For our new regulars since we took over ownership, Bambino is a place to invest their time and energy for genuine service and an excellent cup of coffee. For our new customers Cafe Bambino is a coffee shop to get a quality beverage and catch a glimpse into a casual Ballard lifestyle.
How does it feel to be a part of specialty coffee history in Seattle, and what’s next for Café Bambino?
We are very excited to be taking Cafe Bambino into our version of Third Wave Specialty Coffee. It feels like we are having success preserving a touch of old Seattle while modernizing our product.
Cafe Bambino is going to grow, either into more shops or different outlets in coffee or maybe into community outings. Keep an eye on us while we grow and the one thing you can always bet on for us is that we will be having as much fun as possible.
Café Bambino is a coffee bar and roaster with one location based in Seattle. Follow them on Instagram.
