Proud Mary sits on NE Alberta Street, northeast of downtown Portland in the Alberta Arts District, and behaves more like a daytime restaurant with a serious coffee bar than a simple cafe. The room is bright and busy, with table service, a retail shelf, a visible coffee counter, patio seats, and a walk-up window for people who are not joining the brunch queue.
Coffee
The Melbourne roots show in the scale of the offer. Espresso, batch brew, long blacks, milk drinks, showcase flights, and retail beans all sit inside one system, backed by Proud Mary's own roasting and direct coffee sourcing. It is at its best when you treat the coffee list as part of the meal rather than a prelude to it: smell the grounds, ask what is expressive that day, and leave room for a bag if something lands.
Filter
Filter is the high-wire act. Proud Mary has a regular pour-over side and a more expensive deluxe lane for rarer lots, sometimes served with tasting-card theatre and glassware that makes the cup feel closer to wine service. That can be exciting or too much, depending on your tolerance for ceremony and price. The safest move is to ask for the coffee that best matches how much attention you want to spend.
Food
The kitchen earns its own visit. This is one of the Portland coffee stops where brunch is not an afterthought: ricotta hotcakes, avocado toast, potato hash with pork belly, eggs, cakes, pastries, juices, and breakfast cocktails all fit the room. Menus change, but the pattern is clear: vivid, plated, Australian-inflected daytime food that justifies sitting down instead of carrying a cup back to the street.
Service & Room
Come expecting energy. Weekends can mean a wait, groups should plan around the brunch rhythm, and this is not the natural place to disappear behind a laptop. At the counter, the coffee service can be fun because the baristas have room to explain the flights and the rarer beans. At a table, the better visit is breakfast, one deliberate coffee, and a little time on Alberta before or after.
Why Filter Notes shortlisted Proud Mary
Proud Mary is shortlisted because Portland has plenty of precise coffee, but fewer places where a roaster's filter program, a full brunch kitchen, retail beans, and a lively room all pull at the same level. Cross town for a fuller daytime stop: coffee with range, food with actual draw, and enough theatre to make the visit feel different from the city's quieter espresso bars.