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Toi Moi & Café

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Toi, Moi & Cafe | Cafe TorrefacteurToi Moi & Café (“You, me and coffee” for those who don’t speak French) is a micro-roaster with its own café, located conveniently just around the corner from my friend Adam’s apartment, where I was staying in Montréal. It’s the last of the Coffee Spots from the visit I made to Montréal back in March and rounds off an excellent visit. I came to Montréal with no expectations and left having found a wonderful coffee scene, with a wide variety of places.

Toi Moi & Café doesn’t fit the bill of the third-wave coffee shop: as well as serving coffee, which it roasts itself, it’s also an excellent breakfast, lunch and dinner spot in a residential part of Montréal. And it has lots of cake. In short, it does pretty much everything, and, being around the corner from Adam’s, I found myself a fairly regular visitor, heading there for both breakfast and lunch, as well as coffee and cake!

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Résonance!

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A fine vegan cortado from Résonance, the milk being a blend of almond and coconutOne of the great things about my (now not so) recent trip to Montréal is the variety of the places that I visited. They all serve excellent coffee, but that’s about all they have in common. Take Résonance, another of the recommendations I got from Marie-Ève of Pikolo Espresso Bar. Down in a basement, it’s in what I’d call an “interesting” part of Avenue du Parc (about 12 blocks up from Pikolo). Café by day, jazz bar by night, it serves a full range of vegan food, one of the few coffee spots in Montréal not to focus exclusively on coffee.

Résonance, supplied by Toronto-based Pilot Coffee Roasters, offers as wide a variety of coffee as any place I’d been on my trip. Along with the usual espresso-based drinks, pour-over and cafetiere coffee was also on offer, plus decaf options (essential, I would have thought, for somewhere that says open until midnight!). It was also one of the more spacious coffee spots I’d visited, roughly the same size as Café Olimpico but with a very different atmosphere, which changed as the evening wore on, the focus subtly shifting from coffee to jazz.

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Le Lapin Pressé

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Le Lapin Pressé, café + grillcheeserie.Montréal is experiencing a coffee boom: several of the Coffee Spots I visited during my brief stay had opened within the last 18 months. Not Le Lapin Pressé, though: by the time you read this, it will have celebrated its fourth birthday, making it one of the more established players on the scene. However, like many of my Montréal Coffee Spots, it came highly recommended. Starting with Jovan the Poet, who button-holed me in Café Myriade to tell me that I must go there, Le Lapin Pressé kept turning up in people’s lists of places I had to go. So, naturally, I went.

As well as its reputation for excellent coffee, Le Lapin Pressé is also known for its grilled-cheese sandwiches. Having tried both, I can confirm that the reputation is well earned: indeed, that’s pretty much all Le Lapin Pressé does. Well, that and tea/soft drinks for those who don’t like coffee, and salad/soup to go with the sandwiches. But really, in the grand scheme of things, it’s very firmly focused on coffee and toasted sandwiches and I admire somewhere that knows what it’s doing and pursues excellence in it to the exclusion of everything else.

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Pumphrey’s Brewing Emporium

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The Pumphrey's Coffee sign: 'Pumphrey's Coffee Served Here'Pumphrey’s, the coffee and tea merchants, is something of a legend in the North East and in Newcastle in particular. A family firm which can trace its roots all the way back to 1750, it’s still going strong. As well as wholesale roasting and distribution, Pumphrey’s has a retail arm, Pumphrey’s Brewing Emporium, right in the heart of Newcastle’s Grainger Market.

Regular readers will know that I have a thing for markets. So you can imagine my delight on not just finding a market, but on finding one with a top-notch Coffee Spot in it as well. Newcastle, I think I love you!

Pumphrey’s Brewing Emporium sells coffee beans and all manner of coffee equipment, as well as tea and other hot beverage sundries. Not only that, but it also dispenses coffee wisdom to those who wish to learn it and, to top it all, you can get a great cup of coffee, either from the espresso machine or brew bar. What more could you ask for? A bright, sunny day? In Newcastle? Yes, I had that too!

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Full Court Press

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A cup of filter coffee from Full Court PressThe latest in the recent explosion of speciality coffee shops in Bristol, Full Court Press, or FCP Coffee, burst onto the scene on 1st May. I gave it a day to settle down and then went in to see what all the fuss was about.

Bristol has a number of top-notch coffee shops that would grace any city in the country and FCP has leapt right in there with them. Reminiscent of (the sadly now closed) Didn’t You Do Well in both decor and coffee attitude, owner Mat has created something special here. From the moment you walk through the door, you know you are going to get some special coffee. Two white boards on the walls behind the large counter list the four beans available, along with tasting notes and preparation methods. Unusually, FCP has no preferred roaster, and while that may change when things settle down, currently each of the four beans is from different roasters and regularly change.

While I was there, Chris, from Small Street Espresso came in and while he sat at the back chatting with Mat, barista Dave gave me a tour of the premises and a quick demonstration of the art of making coffee (see the gallery).

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Coffee Barker

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The Coffee Barker sign, written on one of the windows.It’s been many years since I was last in Cardiff and I’ve certainly never been there in my guise as a consumer of fine coffee. So, I was interested to see what the capital of the country of my birth had to offer and I’m pleased to say that I wasn’t disappointed. Leading the way, in rival arcades in the city centre, are two very different places, today’s Coffee Spot, Coffee Barker, and The Plan Café.

You’ll find Coffee Barker in the beautiful Victorian Castle Arcade. It has fiercely loyal customers: you know you are onto something good when you are interrupted in your chat with the baristas to be told, unprompted, by one of the customers: “best coffee in Cardiff”. Concise and to the point.

Whether it is the best coffee in Cardiff is up for debate. Certainly third-wave coffee purists will prefer The Plan, but if what you want  (like me) is a no-nonsense espresso or a bucketful of cappuccino (not me!), then the delightful surroundings of Coffee Barker should put it top of your list. There’s also lots of cake and sandwiches if you’re feeling hungry.

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Café Olimpico

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Café Olimpico, depuis 1970 (since 1970)Make no mistake, even though this is Montréal and its staff switch effortlessly between French and English, Café Olimpico is Italian to its roots. Compared to some Italian places I visited on my North American trip, it’s a relative newcomer, having “only” been around since 1970, when it was founded by the late Rocco Furfaro (it’s now owned by Rocco’s daughters, Rossana and Victoria).

It’s best described as a neighbourhood espresso bar. Located on the corner of Rue St-Viateur and Rue Waverley, right in the heart of residential Mile End, Café Olimpico feels like your local, except that it serves coffee, not alcohol, from seven in the morning until midnight, seven days a week. I’m not a fan of alcohol, so pubs and bars have never held much appeal. However, Café Olimpico is exactly how I’d imagine my local would be if pubs served (excellent) coffee instead of beer…

Warm, welcoming, friendly: the ideal place to pop in for a quick espresso or to meet up with friends for an hour or two over a latte; Café Olimpico is a wonderful place. If I lived in the neighbourhood, I really would be in here all the time!

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Café Myriade

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The Cafe Myriade LogoCafé Myriade can claim to have planted the seeds of the wave of new coffee spots emerging in Montréal in the last 18 months. It opened back in 2008 and many of the recent crop, including Pikolo Espresso and Le Couteau/The Knife, can trace their lineage and/or inspiration back to Myriade and its owner, Anthony. It can also stake a claim to having introduced the awesome-looking Kees van der Westen Triplette espresso machine to Montréal.

However, despite this impressive heritage, I very nearly walked out of Myriade about 10 seconds after walking in. It was heaving, all the tables were taken, there was a queue at the counter and the loud music was really very loud. To cap it all, I was in a foul mood. However, I forced myself to stay and was very glad that I did.

Once I’d settled down and got a table, I found that I loved the place. The atmosphere was great, as was the music, although it won’t be to everyone’s tastes. The coffee was excellent and the staff knowledgeable and helpful. Even the other customers were friendly! What’s more, it’s right in the heart of downtown Montréal where independent coffee spots seem thin on the ground.

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Pink Lane Coffee

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One of the intimate nooks in Pink Lane Coffee, appropriately enough painted pink...Pink Lane Coffee is, appropriately enough, on Pink Lane, handily located just across the road from Newcastle’s Central Station. Unfortunately, I was coming from the other direction and almost missed it. From the outside, it looks unpromising, tucked away on the ground floor of the Pink Lane Business Centre. If I’m honest, it doesn’t look much like a coffee shop, with the door set back from the lane, a rather unpromising, cramped little place. However, a bit like the Tardis, it’s a lot bigger on the inside. And much nicer.

When you do venture across the threshold, you’ll find a wonderful coffee shop, with something for everyone. The beans were from London’s Union Hand-Roasted and Bath’s Round Hill and the resulting coffee is lovely (although Pink Lane now roasts in-house under its Colour Coffee Company brand). As a place to sit and drink it, Pink Lane stands comparison to anywhere I’ve been. There’s a bench outside, while inside you’ll find comfy sofas, stools at the counter, intimate nooks, plus the usual mix of small and big tables. Throw in a generous supply of power outlets and free wifi and you have somewhere I could happily spend an entire day… In fact, it was so welcoming that I had to throw myself out!

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True Grounds

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One of the many fine tables in True Grounds, with some of Maria Marx's paintings hanging on the wall above it.Some places I’m sold on when I walk in the door. Others take a little while to grow on me. Some never do and so don’t make it into the Coffee Spot. It’s fair to say that I was sold on True Grounds from the moment I saw it from across the street. I’m not sure why, but I’ve learnt over the years to trust my Coffee Spot radar: it rarely lets me down. So it was with True Grounds.

True Grounds is a neighbourhood coffee shop par excellence. It’s the sort of neighbourhood coffee shop that makes you want to move into the neighbourhood. It might be off the beaten track up in Somerville, north of Boston, but I’m glad that I went out of my way to pay it a visit. What makes it for me is the space, a bright, sunny, warm and welcoming place to drink my coffee, which was, by the way, excellent.

I might have been swayed by the bright, sunny day, but whatever it was, True Grounds made a lasting impression on me!

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