(SpoCOOL) A Spokane Blog

Well, the voting in our “Best of...” -- or your “Best of…” as it is -- flew past in a flurry this year. Thanks to all of you for voting; the results were very close this year, but in the end we think we saw many worthy winners.

As always we reveal the top six, because why not? A voting scale from one to six, a top six... It's all arbitrary enough to make sense to us.

So let's kick it off with what was possibly the closest category of all...

Best Coffee Shop
1	-	Coeur Coffee
2	(4)	INDABA Coffee
3	(2)	Atticus Coffee and Gifts
4	·	Revel 77
5	(6)	Cannon Coffee & Cone
6	·	Madeleine's Cafe

... which once again put Coeur on top, though it was neck to neck this time around.

INDABA and Coeur kept trading places until Coeur finally took off with a late sprint toward the very end.

Quasi old timer Madeleine's made its debut on the list, though possibly most interesting was a great bullet by Revel. They've only been around for a year, and have evidently already gathered a good fan-base.

As for Coeur and INDABA? I doubt anyone would be too surprised over their top spots. We think they're the two best coffee spots in town, and evidently so do you. The four others held their own, and the results could very well be turned upside down next year.

Best Coffee Roaster
1	-	DOMA Coffee
2	·	Manners Roasting Company
3	(2)	Roast House Coffee
4	·	Evans Brothers
5	(3)	Anvil Coffee Roasting
6	(5)	Bumper Crop

The coffee roaster category was also a close race. Or rather, #2 to #6 fought it out bravely: DOMA hit #1 yet again and dominated throughout the voting. With all its national recognition it truly is a prophet in its own land.

And speaking of prophets: Mr Spokane's Manners Roasting hit number two with a bullet. Roast House and Evans were close for a while, but once again we saw a late sprint toward the top. A well deserved debut by Manners which does not have a very wide distribution network yet.

The coffee scene keeps getting better here in Spokane, and we think your votes reflected that. It doesn't really matter if a spot or roaster placed on top or number nine or wherever. The coffee shop top ten was only separated by one point. (The roasters admittedly by a wider margin: about 2.5 points.)

Tomorrow: Best Winery and Best Brewery.

Last call to vote in our “Best of…” this early? Yes! The votes have come in faster than the past few years and have already gone past our arbitrary closing-number. Thus the ballot will be closed at the end of the day. Vote!

Somewhat quickly (or not quickly at all, or maybe even not at all, who knows?!) after the “Best of…” comes Nuclear Spiceawar, the third and probably last in our series of spicy food contests. (I mean, everyone is saying they're “coming out of retirement one last time” and all.) Our highly official planning meeting will take place tomorrow, so if you have any input on how a spicy food contest should be run, feel free to tweet @SpoCOOL or email team@spocool.com.

The culinary world is up in arms about the biggest controversy that has hit since... Well, I don't know since when or what, but this is big. No pun intended with that actually, which leads me to my point: Burger King -- affectionally referred to as BK among friends -- has ripped off the Big Mac down to the name. That's right, the Big King has hit, and it has hit hard-ish.

And this was naturally something I'd have to compare in a taste test, to ask the question: Should this exist?

The answer is no, but you already knew that. Neither of these should exist. But, how similar are they really? For my blind test I had to pick out which was which based on their looks, then see if my mind was changed after tasting. As you can see, marketing once again trumps real world as far as the presentations are concerned.

Yeah...

Shared ugliness aside, I will say I was a bit surprised about which was which. I got it wrong, and the Big Mac on the right does, in my mind, look more like a real, non-processed burger than the Big King. Wasn't there a time where BK produced something that looked more like real burgers?

Taste wise? They were identical. I mean, literally identical, with only difference I could pick up on, and I'm near 100% certain was a mistake on McDonald's side. The Big Mac lacked that patented McDonald's sauce, which BK now has replicated perfectly. Or “perfectly”. You know what I mean.

If you haven't had a Big Mac in a while (or indeed a Big King) let me just remind you that these burgers really do not taste like anything. They can call it a stack bread and meat and lettuce and cheese as much as they want, but that's not really what they are. They're like some mysterious look-alikes from another dimension where things look like their earthly equivalents, just without any flavor.

Both burgers cost $2.79, and the conspiracy theorist in me can't help but think that they are made in the same kitchen as some grand joke on us all. 

And again, if there was any doubt: Neither of these should exist. 

It's that time of year again, the time when you can vote in our annual “Best of Spokane”! And it works pretty much the same way it worked previous years:

Here you don't vote as much as you score places on a scale from one (worst) to six (best). This because most tend to have more than one favorite in each category. And who doesn't want to vote some spots down? You're evil little imps is what you are! (Or maybe that's just us?)

And again, we have (with your help) picked out the categories and spots you can score. This is a mix of what commonly is considered Spokane's best spots with a good dollop of some wildcards to boot.

I mean, it's that simple, so go ahead and vote! Unless, of course, you want the full set of “rules”:

1. You score on a scale from 1 (worst) to 6 (best). Again: six is the best score. Leave the “-” for spots you haven't visited or have no opinions about. (Or click it if you accidentally scored something you didn't mean to score.)
2. Score according to categories. Some spots are nominated multiple times, so if you like, say, Boots's baked goods, you can score them high in that category. Should you not like their coffee, you can score them low in that category. (That was a random example; don't bite my head off if I offended you or anyone else.)
3. One entry allowed per voter.

It's about as simple as that. As always we leave the ballot open until the results go the way we want them to for a limited time, so vote while you have the chance!

Vote!