Toronto Coffee Bender

Coffee Bender: Like a pub crawl, or a wine tour, but with coffee.

Rolled out of my house at 6am this morning to head to Toronto for the day: Scott, who is going to be managing the new Spot in Florida this fall, is jumping around to different stores to see how they work, and I needed to get up there to calibrate their Fetco and fix a few computer things. After a whirlwind of banking/ordering at Spot Elmwood, we hit the road. Finally listened to that Radiolab on numbers that we never seem to finish.

I like the layout of the Spot in Toronto: it has a lot of nice over-the-bar interaction space, and I like the Marzocco's placement relative to the customers. I want to convert the big long bar-space into a brew-bar: the first time I saw the cafe, I thought: halogen siphon bar @ la Blue Bottle.

After spending the day doing kitchen stuff, Fetco calibrating, CPU adjustments, we decided to do a whirlwind coffee bender in Toronto. Good golly Toronto is a good coffee town. I kept forgetting to take pictures, and I also kept forgetting to make Scott take pictures with his far better skills and equipment.

For the latter part of the tour, we picked up Ambrosia of My Tiny Tank (I hear she's got a cookbook in the works). Grabbed some lunch at Sneaky Dee's: pretty good! I agonized for way too long, total geek moment, trying to find an awesome Mexican dish that was a.) meatless, and b.) wouldn't mess up my palate with spiciness. Wound up with the Vegan Burro Favorito, which hit both my requirements.

But! The tour, in brief:

Manic is my stand-by third-wave shop in Toronto, typically the one shop I suggest to people. Plus it's close to Kensington, and let's be honest, everyone I know fits somewhere in a Venn diagram of hipsterdom: they're going to Kensington if they have time and they're in Toronto. Manic uses Intelligentsia beans, they've totally got their act together, I like it. Always surprised by how laptop-intensive the place is, though. I had a Sidama coffee brewed in the Clover. Lovely berry notes with a surprising amount of body. Scott & I talked about Direct Trade for a bit. Scott speaks Spanish and has a fair amount of time in Central America under his belt, which always gives me ideas when Direct Trade origin trips come up.

I finally got to Sam James Coffee Bar and OH MY GOSH NEW COFFEE MECCA. Sam James and his shop are an inspiration. Amazing service, amazing coffee, simple, beautifully presented, I think any barista worth the name has got to wonder: “Why aren't I doing this?” I got to talk to Sam for a little bit and, insult to injury, he is a super-nice guy. He's using beans from Toi Moi & Cafe roastery, and I got what I'm pretty sure is the best cap I've ever had. Probably I need to go back and just take notes on his technique for like 3 days. Incidentally: awesome chocolate orange croissant with little bits of chewy orange rind folded in, I forgot to ask where they were from.

Next stop: Lit Espresso Bar. Love the décor of this place, oh my gosh! Super-heavy on wood grain, the bar appears to be a polished pile of lumber, and I love it. I also really really like their awesome, folds-up-to-business-card-size menu. That is a good idea. The Marzocco Mistral is a beautiful machine, I like the low-slung body particularly, but the baristas there said they'd had a lot of problems with it. Scott, Ambrosia & I all got cortados made with Stumptown's Hairbender. I don't think anybody in Buffalo has cortados on the menus (or flat whites for that matter)...that's a blog post for another day.

Ran into James Tso at Lit; I don't know James' position exactly but he seems to be the go-to guy for all things Marzocco within a few hundred miles of Toronto, doing sales and maintenance for Patera/Tace, as well as judging barista competitions. James was one of the guys who started me into the joys of basic espresso machine maintenance and repairs, realizing how the mechanical aspect affects the palate side.

Blondie's was a super-surprise, I knew they were part of the Toronto Coffee Conspiracy, but that was it, until Sam James & others pointed us that way. It's actually in a (beer/liquor) bar, I guess the baristas just rent the space in the morning/afternoon, then they shut down and the space turns back into a bar. Actually kind of brilliant, and efficient! Why don't more people do this? Regardless, they have Origins Organic Espresso, which is ONE OF MY FAVORITES. Got a straight-up shot of espresso, and I was not disappointed: the barista pulled me a great shot, and this stuff is lick-the-bottom-of-the-demi delicious, bright and sweet and fruity.

Our last stop was the Dark Horse on Spadina—I'd only been to the Queen East location before. This one is considerably bigger and way busier. Again, a theme in Toronto, I really like the décor. The bar is gorgeous, lots of wood and brick, and the artwork on the walls was good enough to comment on. They use 49th Parallel beans, and I decided to end the bender on a cup of French-Pressed El Salvador. A very nice cup, with some spiciness and raisin/fig-like fruitiness. Phil, one of the baristas, chatted with us for a while about the Toronto coffee scene.

Then it was time to high-five Ambrosia and get back on the QEW. My one complaint about Toronto, every trip: getting in and out of the city is nightmarish; they need to get some awesome train system going (of course, I say this about every city). Coffee bender: success! I still have a big list of shops to hit for the next time I'm up there: Balzac, Cherry Bomb, Crema, Te Aro, and Mercury Organic high among them. I'm actually surprised we were able to fit so many shops in without freaking out, especially given that Scott & I were taste-testing coffee at Spot as part of our calibrating process.

Four hours later and a long philosophy-rich QEW-ride home, my body is finally metabolizing the caffeine and I am crashing hard. A couple quick comments on the Toronto scene, and then I'm out:
-Disloyalty card equals awesome.
-I really like the awareness of the scene that all the baristas seemed to have; see above.
-I'm still surprised that there aren't more brew-bar options. Manic has a Clover, which is the probably the best option I saw; Sam James has vac-pots & others had press-pots, but no pour-over rails in sight. Seems like the progressive coffee in Toronto is all espresso/macchiatos/cappuccinos, with less emphasis on non-espresso coffee.
-Ambrosia tells me that almost all milk up thereabouts is lactose-free? Weird! It's almost like they don't want to shame people for their differences or something. Still surprised to see her break veganhenge, though.
-Love the mix of roasters available! It's great to see that level of variety of really high-end beans.
-I saw no non-Marzocco machines at the shops we visited; the Linea is still the workhorse, which is kind of cool to see. I didn't ask if any of them were PID retrofitted.
-Roburs, Roburs, everywhere. I really like the red-body Roburs Sam James is using; I wish I could mess around with the timed doserless they were using at Manic. Saw a couple Anfims also.
-Sorry again for the no pictures, I'm getting a new camera and, assuming I can work it, I will put some pretty ones up.

By the way, check out blogTO, awesome blog and "Best" listings for Toronto, I use it to rough out a lot of my plans when I'm heading that way.