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Sam James to open up shop in the Path

Coming soon to the Path: latte art (Image: Zack Simone from the Torontolife.com Flickr pool)

In this season of giving, it’s only fitting that Toronto’s favourite coffee son, Sam James, would announce he’s taking pity on the poor downtown cubicle jockeys who’ve had to shuttle between Starbucks, Timmie’s, Second Cup and Timothy’s to get their fix. Starting February or March of next year, he’ll be opening up a second Sam James Coffee Bar in the Path beneath the Sun Life Financial Building at 150 King Street West. He first expanded from his original Harbord Street location with last year’s tiny Coffee Pocket on Bloor. Yesterday he told Post City that the new downtown location would preserve his signature bare-bones, no-seats vibe, and would be equipped with a pair of customized La Marzocco Lineas to handle the volume of traffic he’s expecting. He also took the opportunity to vent a little about the sterility of the financial district’s retail landscape: “The financial district in New York City is crammed with businesses; in Chicago, Intelligentsia has locked down the financial core. And Toronto’s financial district has nothing, but there are a ton of people who are looking for something good.” Read the entire story [Post City] »

The Dish

Caffeine High

October 6, 2011 | 12:12 pm

4 Comments

With news of price hikes at Starbucks, we called around to see what indie shops are charging for their coffee

The coffee display at Manic Coffee (Image: Renée Suen from the Torontolife.com Flickr pool)

On Tuesday, the Toronto Star reported that Starbucks had raised its prices for coffee and other beverages across the country by anywhere from 10 to 15 cents for a grande bold (16 ounces). This comes after Tim Hortons raised its prices back in April, which interim CEO Paul House attributed to the increasing cost of coffee thanks to a fungus that destroys coffee plants in Colombia. We decided to survey several local coffee retailers to see how a shift in the market is affecting their business. Check out whose prices went up, whose stayed the same and what innovative measures are being taken to offset costs, after the jump.

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The Dish

Caffeine High

August 24, 2011 | 12:40 pm

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Sam James to celebrate his coffee bar’s second anniversary this Sunday with free lattes for all

Toronto espresso hero Sam James is celebrating his tiny Harbord Street coffee bar’s second anniversary this Sunday, when he’ll be dispensing free lattes and other drinks to all comers (if it’s anything like last year’s celebration, expect a line). Over at Post City, Jon Sufrin has written a coffee geek’s guide to what makes the place special. Some of it is standard issue bean-nerdery: James is picky about his portafilters and he treats his tap water before using it in his espresso machines. But some of it is definitely next-level: apparently he’s been taking sommelier training courses to help “realize my potential for tasting coffee.” That’s dedication. Read the whole story [Post City] »

The Dish

From the Print Edition

March 30, 2011 | 10:05 am

2 Comments

The Year in Dining: our chief critic dishes on the city’s big food trends

Crostino with egg from Brockton General; Cheese from Enoteca Sociale; Bitter greens got some love; Beau's craft beer from Zócalo; Porchetta and Co.'s sandwich

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The Dish

Caffeine High

January 17, 2011 | 11:23 am

15 Comments

The rise of the indie coffee mini-empire

Dark Horse's new Queen and Euclid location keeps it real (Image: Jon Sufrin)

For Toronto coffee lovers, 2011 started in much the same way that 2010 finished: with further proof that the indie coffee craze shows no signs of slowing down. A third incarnation of Dark Horse opened at Queen and Euclid on January 2nd, joining Lit and Crema B Espresso as burgeoning mini-empires, with three locations each (a third Crema location is in the works). All of this, of course, raises the question: with indie cafés thriving due to their personal touch and attention to quality, will expansion mean selling out?

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The Dish

Caffeine High

January 11, 2011 | 10:20 am

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Foam craft: seven baristas show us their best latte art

Mercury’s co-owner Matthew Taylor pours a fire-breathing dragon in a cup (Image: Jon Sufrin)

Ten years ago, latte art was virtually unheard of in Toronto. Today, finding a rosetta, heart or tulip swirled into a latte is as common as, well, an indie coffee shop on Queen West or College. While latte art is essentially just a garnish, it’s also telling of a barista’s competence. As Bulldog’s Stuart Ross—who helped bring the craft to the city—notes, it just won’t work unless the espresso and the milk are done right. And as the city’s coffee scene broadens, so does the complexity of coffee presentation. We hit the streets to find some of the more unusual, intricate and interesting examples of this culinary art. Click here to start the show »

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The Dish

Caffeine High

December 7, 2010 | 1:01 pm

11 Comments

Introducing: Sense Appeal, a cafe with a “director of coffee extraction”

This is the first cafe for the Nobleton-based roaster (Image: Jon Sufrin)

With an undeniable indie cafe explosion taking place, it’s only a matter of time before Toronto’s coffee scene enters the realm of molecular gastronomy. With Sense Appeal Coffee Roasters, which opened near the corner of Spadina and Adelaide last month, we’re getting closer. Head barista Sameer Mohamed, for example, only half-jokingly refers to himself as “the director of coffee extraction.” He argues that coffee is more complex than wine, but far less explored. “There are 1,000 volatile compounds in coffee that contribute to aroma and taste,” he says. “We have the capacity to manipulate 33 of those. With wine, there’s 200 compounds, and you can manipulate 15.” We’ll take his word for it.

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The Dish

Opening

November 29, 2010 | 10:00 am

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Introducing: Sam James Coffee Pocket, a second location for a local espresso guru

Sam James in his Pocket

When Sam James set up his eponymous coffee shop on Harbord last year, some were skeptical that a business could thrive in such a small space. Well, the coffee guru flipped a resounding bird to that notion on Saturday by surreptitiously opening a new, tinier joint up the street at Bloor and Clinton. Sam James Coffee Pocket is even more efficient than its predecessor—takeout only (espresso excluded), no drip, no decaf and zero seating—but the trademark taste is no different.

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The Dish

Aprons & Icons

August 30, 2010 | 5:20 pm

4 Comments

Nine amazing kitchen gadgets from Toronto’s restaurant kitchens

We’re all for home-cooked meals and comfort food, but let’s face it: people go to restaurants to order stuff they can’t duplicate at home without the right skill set, equipment or the $625 to buy Nathan Myhrvold’s Modernist Cuisine cookbook. We talked to nine Toronto chefs about their weird, famous or indispensable food-making gizmo.

Here’s a slide show of the results »

The Dish

Caffeine High

August 27, 2010 | 8:50 am

2 Comments

The best way to get cheap coffee at Manic, I Deal, Crema and more

Lattes taste sweeter when they're free and with a cookie (Image: Georgette via the Toronto Life Flickr pool)

While the reasons to avoid corporate coffee shops are abundantly clear to any aficionado, there is now a new enticement to explore Toronto’s coffee scene: the Indie Coffee Passport. For $20, the passport allows the bearer to indulge in one free coffee or tea (up to $5 on the menu) at 24 indie coffee shops throughout the city. For the mathematically disinclined, that’s $120 worth of coffee or tea for $20, plus a little legwork to traverse the city. The passport can be purchased on-line here or at some of the participating coffee shops. While some big names are conspicuously absent from the list (Sam James, Dark Horse and Lit, to name a few), the choices should allow for some interesting experimentation. Participating locations, after the jump.

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The Dish

Caffeine High

August 24, 2010 | 3:10 pm

8 Comments

Free coffee! Sam James celebrates its birthday this weekend

It’s been a year since Sam James brought siphon coffee to the city, and the café is celebrating its first year with free java on Sunday, with none of that annoying “first 200 customers with printout coupons” stuff that almost brought Oprah down. “We just want to give back to everyone who was a customer with us for the last year,” says the barista. All espresso-based drinks, like cappuccinos and macchiatos, will be on the house. The only rules are that beverages must be ordered to go (to avoid a backlog of dirty cups and saucers) and limited to one coffee per person.

The Dish

Opening

June 21, 2010 | 1:04 pm

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Just Opened: Beast. Scott and Rachelle Vivian take over the Amuse-Bouche space

Beastly setting: the dining room at Beast (Image: Lisa Paul)

“I don’t dislike vegetarians, but my style of cooking is heavy on meat,” says chef Scott Vivian. It’s more of a warning than a defence: the Montreal-born chef has just opened a new restaurant with his wife, Rachelle, and it more than lives up to its name, Beast.

The carnivore theme is evident in the changing weekly dinner menus prepared by Scott and Luca Gatti, the sous-chef who came along when Scott and Rachelle left Wine Bar. Starters include such seasonal items as soft shell crab with foie gras, greens and jalapeño ($19), and mains include such meat-heavy dishes as pig’s head pasta with pea shoots, yolk and spaghetti ($16).

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The Dish

Caffeine High

April 6, 2010 | 4:24 pm

5 Comments

Double latte, double standard: indie cafés slammed for being too popular

(Image: ed zeppelin, from the Toronto Life Flickr pool)

Every time a Toronto café becomes popular or thinks about expanding, its indie status is called into question. People are quick to use the words “chain,” “sellout” and, most offensive of all, “Starbucks.” There was an article in the Globe this week announcing the creation of the Toronto Coffee Conspiracy, a group of third-wave café owners—such coffeemongers as Matt Taylor of Mercury Espresso, Sam James of his namesake spot, Matt Lee of Manic and Ed and Deanna of Dark Horse—who have banded together to promote their businesses and spread the word of proper java making. And it didn’t take long for the haters to log on and sound off.

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The Dish

Caffeine High

March 12, 2010 | 10:02 am

8 Comments

BNN legitimizes McDonald’s–Tim Hortons coffee war in excruciatingly long taste test

James, Taylor sniff out the goodness (Image: BNN)

We knew the country’s post-Olympic patriotism would settle down, but not like this. The Business News Network spent nearly 20 minutes analyzing every last drop of the McDonald’s–Tim Hortons coffee war, and, long story short, they believe McDonald’s coffee tastes better than Timmies’.

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The Dish

Restauran-TO

January 19, 2010 | 9:27 am

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J.P. Challet returns to the Windsor Arms

Peter Tsang, Jennifer Decorte and J.P. Challet (Photo by Jessica Darmanin)

More than a decade after he reopened the restaurant at the Windsor Arms, French chef J.P. Challet is returning to revamp the dining options at the classic hotel, along with partners Jennifer Decorte and Peter Tsang. Their company Ici La-bas Partout, which has been operating out of an as-yet-unopened bistro on Harbord, will be transforming Prime, the hotel’s steakhouse, into a modern French restaurant called Ici. As for the spot on Harbord, it’s still coming, assures Decorte; they plan to open Ici Aussi in March.

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