Best Coffee Shops in Vancouver

May, it seems came and is now almost gone, with not one entry of my fabulous tales. Not to say that there have not been any fabulousness - or tail, but it's time that has escaped me.
Time to write, time to ride.
I have been so busy with the Office people, then there is Bingo which has now gone weekly, a part time job with Cannon and a little bit of work for Out On Screen.

Between all these responsibilites, somehow I managed to score two days for a visit by my oh so lovely cousin Tristan, who was visiting the Mainland as a part of his apprenticeship to become a java guru. He has started working for a cafe in the trendy downtown core of Nanaimo where his boss has been encouraging him to learn more about the passion of coffee.
So we spent those two days going from one coffee shop to the next, he had a list of 10 to which we added a few. I was simply a tour-guide in this coffee bar-crawl, but Tristan, had to sample all the espresso which by nightime he was not well for.

We started the trip with Artigiano's.
A Vancovuer hot-spot where my friend Dejan works. It is the most popular cafe around and the company is growing like a baby strabucks. Apparently they just opened 55 stores in Korea... but I digress. They started in a small store in Cappuccino Lane on Hornby St across from the lawcourts a few years back. There were three novelty coffee shops right next to each other - talk about competition...unbeleivable really. Two years later, Artigiano is way ahead of the pack, it is now synonimous with classic good coffee with all the fancy designs. It has HUGE lineups all the time, which means that it's not the place for a quiet cup. However, the energy is very rich and tasty with fancy artwork to boot. You're paying for the quality for sure, but are taxed heavily for the design.

Next was Joe's Cafe on Commercial Dr.
... a kind of an East Side tradition - though I still don't understand why frankly. It certainly has no atmosphere or anything that is remotely Italian; unless of course lack of atmosphere or design is still considered to be one. It's a huge hall with pool tables, arcades and a large bar where mdiocre coffee is made. The clientelle is undistinguishable with a smattering of leftovers from the days Commercial Drive was the italian district of Vancouver. Now it just has the reputation of once having had a reputation: I guess that' the definition of tradition.

Another Commercial tradition is Callibria's
which is the antithesis of Joe's. Callibria slaps you hard with atmosphere even from the street... with its white colums, Greek and Roman statues and its stucco painting of - you guessed it - scenes from the sistine chappel, it is a sight for your eyes. And just to make it totally memorable, every now and then - when it strikes his fancy- the owner or one of his three sons hits a chord and belts out a tune. This is not a regularly scheduled event, it's more like a lottery. We were lucky NOT to have been serenaded so, which meant we could leave the place eariler and the beverage barely drunk.

I was totally going to give up on commercial Drive, when we walked into Continental Coffee and met Mike. Not only was he the cutest barrista we had met so far (though the prize for cutest goes to the fiercly photogenic flamer at Joe's caffee) but absolutely passionate about the prodcut. We learned more from that short coffee than we had the whole day....and boy was that coffee good, it was heavenly: smooth with a medim body and a clean finish that lingered like caramel. He made it with such attention and pride! He then pointed us at a few other places whose coffee needed to be sampled, but we had to leave that for the next day.