The Riverdale Perk Cafe
633 Logan Avenue (at Withrow)
416-462-3538

Now that the warm weather is here, I look forward to leisurely walks with my golden “mischiever”. Olsen loves his strolls, and a great place for a destination dog-walk or a short break from chasing tails is The Riverdale Perk Café. Located near two doggy-dense parks - Riverdale and Withrow - “The Perk” happily offers rest and fuel for two legs and four.

Owner Danielle Quayle is ambitious. The Perk was her local coffee shop when she first moved into the neighbourhood, but Quayle “was always disappointed with what it could have been and what it wasn’t.” Confident after being in the restaurant biz for 16 years, when The Perk went up for sale, Quayle took a chance.

Continue reading Perks At The Perk »

The Green Beanery
565 Bloor Street West
416-954-9223 ext.253

Each day, on my way to and from work, I walk past a large brick building on the southeast corner of Bathurst and Bloor. Locals and pedestrians constantly peek into the wide windows of the soon-to-be-opened new location of The Green Beanery.

The much anticipated coffee shop has been gearing up to open at this prominent Annex location for months. While there is still no concrete opening date, this non-profit coffee bean purveyor (it proclaims to offer the largest selection of beans in town - a pretty bold claim for a city the size of Toronto) will be a welcome addition to an otherwise garish corner, on a street with too few independent coffee operations.

Continue reading Green Beans In Time for Spring »

Just Us! Cafe
2010 Queen Street East, 490 Queen Street West
416-862-2233

Twelve years ago this month, Jeff Moore travelled to Chiapas, one of Mexico’s poorest and most populous states. In the mountains, farmers were growing, producing and exporting excellent organic coffee beans independently. When Moore arrived there was a civil war brewing over who got the money from the coffee. “Coyotes” – agents for huge international coffee companies – were after the this homegrown business’s funds.

Maneuvering past military road blocks, Moore hiked up the mountains. He met farmers that, even amidst unstable political conditions, felt empowered through their co-op setup. Fair trade had provided them hope. Moore struck a deal to import the farmers’ coffee to Halifax. It would take a minimum shipment of 10 tonnes of coffee, for which he and wife Debra put their house up as security. And they hadn’t yet had a single customer.

Continue reading Maritime Fair Trade Roaster Comes to Town »

Mercury Organic Espresso Bar
915 Queen Street East
647-435-4779

Bulldog Coffee
89 Granby Street
416-606-2275

“Don’t play with your food,” my mother snarled as she snatched away the ketchup dispenser. I never completed the clown face I was squeezing onto my meatloaf. And so my efforts at creative food presentation were squelched at a tender age. I was only twenty-nine. It’s tragic really. Had my mother encouraged me, I may have grown up to be a great barista, a latte artist producing masterpieces out of milk foam.

Continue reading Picture Perfect Latte »

Aroma Espresso Bar
500 Bloor Street West
416-536-7750

With the hustle and bustle of the Annex, the neighbourhood was an obvious choice of venue for Aroma Espresso Bar, the Israeli import and only the second location in North America - the other is in New York City’s Soho neighbourhood. I met Anat Davidzon, operating partner, one Friday morning to see how she’s settling in to their new digs. She is excited by the varying demographics of the neighbourhood which is home to everyone from students and club-goers to working professionals.

At 10am, a smattering of people occupy the large space, a former JJ Muggs venue. An older couple takes a late breakfast, two twenty-somethings gossip about the latest Hollywood scandal, a single man holds up the newspaper to cover his face; yes, this is most definitely a coffee shop, er, an espresso bar.

Continue reading The Smell of Success »

Merchants of Green Coffee
2 Matilda Street
416-741-5369

Coffee. Where would we be without it? It wakes us up, keeps us going and fuels social gatherings. But how many people actually think about where their coffee comes from? Or how fresh it is?

For people who grew up on (and possibly still drink) supermarket coffee, there’s a distinct possibility that they’ve never had a truly fresh cup. That becomes less likely every time a new ethical, fair trade roaster opens up a café in a busy neighbourhood, but there’s still a definite difference in terms of freshness.

A truly fresh coffee is one roasted to perfection, then ground and brewed immediately. Of course, to facilitate this process, it helps to have a source of green coffee beans.

I discovered Merchants of Green Coffee in 2002 and have never looked back. Roasting my own beans has completely changed how I both drink and think about coffee.

Continue reading A Bag of Magic Beans »

What is it about coffee? There is nothing like the perfectly-made espresso or a latte that is rich and creamy, but for some reason it is hard to find. I often ask myself, in a market with so much competition, why is it that a vast majority of coffee produced and consumed is not great coffee?

The most logical explanation would be that people don’t really care about what coffee they drink, as long as it does the job. I’d like to believe this explanation, however every time I go to an artisan café that is centred on quality products and craftsmanship, I hear the same reactions from customers, ‘This coffee is great!’ So now I am led to believe that it is not about what people like, it’s rather they just don’t know what great coffee is.

It is simple; great coffee is like great wine - with different styles, flavours and methods of preparation. In Toronto, a few cafés are starting to produce world-class coffee, and these two are definitely worth a try.

Continue reading Crazy About Coffee »

Canada has a long and proud history of food-related inventions and innovations: the electric stove, instant mashed potatoes, the Caesar, the donair, and poutine were all born within our borders.

Recently joining those most august ranks is the Rimroller. Created by Ottawa inventor Paul Kind, the Rimroller is described rather vaguely on its website as a device to “unroll the rim of contest cups”, but every true Canadian knows what they’re really talking about.

It apparently took Mr. Kind three years to develop this “labour-saving device”, and he’s hoping that it will soon be used on many of the 300 million cups that are sold at Tim Horton’s every year, not to mention those sold during knock-off contests that are held at competing coffee chains.

For all you fans of Timmie’s who are tired of getting wax under your fingernails or between your teeth, the Rimroller is available now at Lee Valley Tools for an introductory price of $1.95.

Through the viral method of news sharing that is the intarwebs, we’ve learned from the folks at MetroBlogging Toronto, who heard it from the folks at the Brotherhood of the Bean who read about it on Slashfood… that tomorrow, March 15th, Starbucks will be handing out free 12oz cups of coffee.

The second annual “coffee break” will run only from 10AM until noon, however, so all you folks who need your early morning fix are SOL in terms of freebies (c’mon… that would just be stupid!). But for everyone else, while we’d never recommend paying for coffee from a chain store, free stuff is always good.

It’s likely a one-per-person kind of deal though, so the mass exodus from office buildings everywhere at morning coffee break time is sure to be a sight to behold.

Dark City Coffee
Scarborough, ON
416-282-6100 (new customers)
416-282-2307 (repeat orders)

As usual, I’m sitting at my computer with a cup of coffee in hand. Unlike my university years of burnt stomach wrenching stuff I liked to call coffee, it’s actually fresh and tasty! Yesterday I received a freshly roasted pound of Costa Rican Tarrazu from Dark City Coffee.

Though not a coffee shop in the traditional sense, Dark City Coffee provides home delivery service to all us coffee lovers in the Greater Toronto Area. Ordering from Dark City Coffee gets you high quality beans, or so my taste buds tell me, and they custom roast them for you right before sending it out. Placing an order before noon on Monday through Thursday will have it arrive at your door the next workday.

Continue reading Coffee At Your Doorstep »

I suppose its a pretty good indication you’re a coffee fanatic when you get a Bodum for your 14th birthday. Coffee has been a daily part of my environment since I was a kid. At the time, my often rowdy brothers and I were under the gentle guidance of a British au pair named Sue. Sue was about as cool a person as any kid could imagine. She was young, hip and had an accent. Naturally, everything she did was fair game for imitation. This included Sue’s particular eating habits. In the years that Sue lived with us, she existed, as far as I or any in my family could tell, exclusively on coffee – seriously, I never saw her eat a single thing. That devotion to coffee was something that stuck with me. And, its a tradition that I have taken on and kept to this day (of course I also eat A LOT of food).

Despite drinking upwards of 8 cups a day in university – thank you very much philosophy – it wasn’t until culinary school that I was able to really see coffee as the sophisticated drink that it is. Coffee is a chemically complex, versatile, and malleable product. In many ways coffee is like a vintage of wine, and having the right person brew your cup is like having a sommelier pour that perfect glass to go with dinner.

Immigrants like me have a different sense of geography. When I was growing up in Calgary, my world was not defined by my block or neighbourhood but by the social network of friends and family. I grew up not knowing my neighbours, but I certainly knew where the other Filipino families lived no matter how far away they were.

I didn’t discover the concept of neighbourhood until I moved out on my own. I think this explains my comfort level of being a tourist in my city. I am comfortable walking in someplace and feeling “foreign.”

Take this coffee shop I go to on the east side of the Danforth. My carpool buddy introduced me to Seb’s Cappuccino (1928 Danforth Avenue) last year. It’s halfway between our two homes so regardless of who was driving that day, we can always meet there.

I was curious about the smattering of Italian coffee shops like Seb’s on this side of the Danforth so I asked one of my retired neighbours who just happens to be a great source of oral history. While most of the Italians settled in the growing Little Italy area of College and Grace on the west side, he told me that two things brought the Italians to this side of Yonge. First was the construction of the Bloor subway line. Apparently, Donway station was one of the entrance points used to access the underground construction, so many of the Italian labourers who built this infrastructure moved here to be closer to work. In addition, an entrepreneurial group of Italians moved here to set up green grocers to supply the growing Italian population and the burgeoning restaurant trade that the Greeks and Macedonians started at around the same time.

But let’s get back to my coffee story. I need to explain my attraction to Seb’s. No, it’s not the décor or the warm fuzzy feeling of “I’m home” when I get there. In fact it’s quite the opposite. I rarely ever go into the coffee shop (I send my husband instead) and the first time I walked in, I had that Twilight Zone-ish feeling: I could have sworn silence swept the room as everyone stopped mid-sentence, mid-activity, to stare. While everything was in suspended animation, I took a quick scan of the room: pool table, card tables and large screen TV at the back (soccer was on – in fact, soccer seems to always be on, no matter the season or time of day), stools immediately to the left where people are perched facing the coffee bar on the right, corkboards on the wall where business cards are tacked and For Sale strips of paper are posted. This is not a trendy place. Nothing too fancy. Nothing to write home about. Except they make a fine cup of coffee!

Continue reading A Tourist in My Own City »