My Favorite Dessert Spot Has The Best Old Portland Atmosphere

The old Victorian home behind a Plaid Pantry is accustomed to weekend crowds now, but some weeknights the dining rooms at Rimsky-Korsakoffee House still feel the way they did when I was young. The wallpaper is some orange-and-white pattern that's hard to discern in the dim lighting from strings of bulbs, candles, and vintage lamps. A pianist plays classical music as friends eat ice cream sundaes with names like Rasputin's Vice and Berries Godunov. The menu and crowd have a pre-revolutionary Russian character. I've sat next to groups of students discussing leftist politics over brownies and coffee, and young men reading chapbooks of poetry alone while sipping mint tea and picking at a giant bowl of ice cream. The space feels like a more casual version of coffee houses I visited in the Balkans — a place to sit and chat where waiters eventually bring your drinks and no one is on a laptop.

A pot of loose-leaf mint tea and a rich ginger cake with caramel sauce is my usual, but sometimes I switch to a Rasputin's Vice (espresso ice cream with coffee syrup and raspberries) or whatever is on special. A few of the sundaes include raspberries (a Russian staple) even though Oregon is known for the marionberry. None of Rimsky-Korsakoffee's teapots are the same, and the cups are all mismatched. The hodgepodge decor reaches its peak in the underwater-themed bathroom, where a drowned kayaker rests across from the toilet, and the mannequin feet of a person fishing off a dock protrude from the ceiling. The scene is a reminder that, while this is an old-world-style coffee house, you're still in Portland — I half expect to see a "keep St. Petersburg weird" sticker on a wall.

Tired of cleaning up after the classical music parties she threw for her kids, Goody Cable opened Rimsky-Korsakoffee House in 1980. Nikolai Rimsky‑Korsakov, the 19th-century Russian composer of "Flight of the Bumblebee" and "Scheherazade," lends his name to the dessert parlor. The Russianness doesn't end there — Louise Bryant and John Reed, two writers who documented the Russian Revolution, used to live in the Victorian Rimsky-Korsakoffee calls home. According to Cable, they still haunt the house.

If you don't know where to look, you might miss the place altogether. The house is set back behind large old trees, with a low-lit porch. The "TripAdvisor" and "City's Best" stickers on the door are the only clues that it's not someone's residence, but somewhere anyone can spend time. No alcohol is served here — just tea, coffee, and desserts. The 7 p.m. to midnight hours every day but Monday make it an ideal third place for teens to hang out late into the night. In high school, it was a spot where we weird theater kids went to feel our big feelings as we rode the end of our post-show adrenaline highs with mint chip ice cream and hot fudge (Ship Goes to Pieces Against a Rock on the menu). This coffeehouse inspired my lifelong love of dessert, which you can see in action on my list of sweet LA dishes. New Portland has fun and eclectic restaurants like Gado Gado, but Rimsky-Korsakoffee House captures that pre-"Portlandia" time when Portlanders created strange, homemade public spaces, each the brainchild of someone with an offbeat dream and just enough money to cover cheap rent.