The Vancouver Caffeine Chronicles

I spent just over three days in Vancouver, but still managed to sample a fair bit of the city's coffee culture. Here are my four favourite coffee bars:

1. Revolver (Gastown). 325 Cambie Street. Website. Twitter. Tucked away on a quiet block of Cambie Street, Revolver offers a vast array of coffees and an even bigger selection of brewing equipment. Exhausted from running and from lack of sleep, I stopped by on my first morning in the city and ordered an Aeropress-brewed cup of Costa Rican coffee from Anchored Coffee Roasters. As I was still hot from my run, I also picked up a bottle of their cold-brew coffee, which comes served in the coolest little medicine bottle — currently adorning my bookshelf.

I was also tempted by the brew flights they serve but that would have to wait...at least six hours, anyway. I was back at Revolver that afternoon and ordered the flight with a Guatemalan variety. With the flight, you can either have three coffee varieties brewed with the same method, or the same coffee brewed through three different methods. I opted for the latter, and when I opened the answer booklet, I was surprised to find that my favourite was the Clever dripped brew, rather than the Aeropress.

 

On the day we left for Saskatoon, I went to Revolver again for another Costa Rican coffee, but went for the Clever-brewed version this time, and really liked it. I sense another coffee purchase coming on. Revolver has plenty of seating inside — all exposed brick and reclaimed wood — and a gorgeous brew bar, where they prepare all the fancy coffee.

2. Timbertrain Coffee Roasters (Gastown). 311 West Cordova Street. Website. Twitter. I spotted Timberlake on my first morning run, on my way to Revolver. I admired their cool logo and their super-stylish brew bar and made a mental note to come back. Indeed, on my second morning, I was eagerly awaiting my pourover. They have the most beautiful copper Kalita drippers and pouring kettles at Timbertain, and my coffee was great. Plus, the staff are all super-friendly.

3. 49th Parallel (Mount Pleasant / Kitsilano). 2902 Main Street / 2198 West 4th Ave. Website. Twitter. I had singled out 49th Parallel while doing research for this trip, partly because of its name (inspired by Vancouver's latitude) and partly because of its new Lucky's Doughnuts project. It took me until my third day in the city to visit their Mount Pleasant Café on South Main Street, as it's a little further away from the downtown area than the others. It was worth the trip though.

Although they don't serve hand-drip coffee, I had a decent americano on my first visit and an excellent macchiato on my second trip, to the West 4th Ave branch. I also love their duck-egg blue crockery — my alma mater would approve! The doughnuts were also awesome, the peanut butter and jelly variety being the winner, although the salted caramel one was great too. Both branches have plenty of seating, including patio seating, and free wifi, and the West 4th cafe also has cool bike parking racks.

4. Innocent Coffee (Fairview). 1340 West 4th Ave. Website. Twitter. Innocent's cute logo loomed on the horizon on my final day in Vancouver when I was desperate need of caffeination and cooling. Their delicious iced pourover killed both birds with the same stone! Innocent is a bright and airy but tiny, dollhouse-like coffee bar and café, run by a brother-and-sister team, who also bake all of the pastries. Its design and concept reminded me of Omotesando Koffee in Tokyo. It's a really cool place and if you're in the area (just south of Granville Island, and just east of the more interesting part of West 4th Avenue), you should definitely check it out.

La Fin de Vancouver

I had a 12-hour layover in Vancouver yesterday on my way back to London, but I didn't mind too much as I could leave my suitcase at the left luggage and take the Sky Train into the city. It takes about 20 minutes and a day pass, which gives you access to most public transport within the city, is under $10. My first destination was the Lululemon Lab, a design hub on West Broadway, where local designers collaborate to produce technical clothing that is a little hipper (i.e. less colourful) than the regular Lulu kit. It's all locally made — very locally, in fact: in the room adjacent to the store.

I had woken up at 5.15 Saskatoon time and by this point it was 10.30 and I was in desperate need of a proper coffee; luckily, I had earmarked a few places nearby. The closest was Innocent Coffee on West 4th Avenue — a small, dollhouse-like house containing a tiny coffee bar on the ground floor. Innocent is run by a brother–sister team, who made me an excellent iced pourover, which woke me up and cooled me down in the hot Vancouver sun.

Caffeine crisis dealt with, food was my next requirement. I thought I would have a quick bite to eat and then a late lunch, but it turns out that West 4th is a great place to get brunch or brunch-like fare. I stopped at Sophie's Cosmic Café, partly because I liked the look of the patio seating area, and partly because I'd heard good things about their eggs Benedict — the primary brunch dish in Vancouver. I can't resist an avo–egg combo, so of course I ordered the Santa Fe eggs Benny, which came with guacamole, salsa, black beans and home fries. It was delicious, although kind of ruined my 'quick bite to eat' plan.

After brunch, I made a brief stop at the original Lululemon, which is just across the street from Sophie's, although I didn't buy anything. The ten or so blocks of West 4th Avenue between Fir and Macdonald are a great place to shop and to wander. There are tons of cute boutiques and nice restaurants and cafés. I headed into 49th Parallel for a macchiato and a salted caramel doughnut (I was full, but I knew it would be the last doughnut for a while).

The sun was getting seriously hot by then, so I headed down to Kitsilano Beach, which is a great place to spend the afternoon on a sunny day. The beach is sandy, there are wonderful views of the city and the mountains, and you can swim, rent kayaks or just lie down and enjoy the sun. I didn't have my swimming kit with me, so I just lay in the sun and paddled. Oh, and leaped, of course.

I then walked around the waterfront to Granville Island, stopping to browse all of the cool design-inspired gifts at Make, before catching the sea bus to Yaletown, an area in the southeast part of downtown Vancouver. As well as lots of interesting restaurants and bars, Yaletown has a lot of cool boutiques. I would have liked to have spent more time there, but time was not on my side.

Instead, I walked back to downtown to do a bit of last-minute shopping, stopped by Japadog — a food truck serving Japanese-style hotdogs — for a quick dinner, and then caught the train back to the airport for the flight back to London. An action-packed day, but a fun one. It would have been nice to spend a couple more days in Vancouver, so that I could have explored Yaletown and Fairview, and done the Grouse Grind (or taken the cable car, at least), but you can see a lot of the city in three or four days. I'll be doing round-up of some of my favourite Vancouver and Saskatoon coffee bars later in the week.

The Paris of the Prairies

Yesterday was our last day in Vancouver — for now, at least — but our flight to Saskatoon wasn't until the afternoon, so we had a little bit of time to spend in the city. I did my usual run along the waterfront, followed by coffee at Revolver (still my favourite Vancouver coffee bar so far).

There was a Douglas Coupland exhibition at the Vancouver Art Gallery, which was just across from our hotel, but as it was $20 to get into the gallery and we didn't have a huge amount of time to kill, I picked up some post-ironic postcards from the gift shop instead.

We had brunch at a diner on Granville Street called The Templeton, which specialises in healthy comfort food. I had one of the less healthy options —a BBB burger (bacon cheeseburger with barbecue sauce — but it was really tasty. Mum's vegan chilli was also great, though. I put my quarter in the jukebox but they didn't get round to playing the Simple Minds before we left.

Then it was time to fly to Saskatoon for the wedding and accompanying celebrations. There were some great views of the Rockies from the plane and before we knew it, we were touching town in Saskatoon. After a wet spring, the city, nicknames the Paris of the Prairies, was beautiful and verdant with the hot afternoon sunshine sparkling on the Saskatchewan River.

Our hotel is on the river and pretty central, so we joined the bride and groom and some of the bride's family and went for dinner at Bottega Trattoria. It felt like an Old Fashioned kind of evening, so I ordered one of those while I decided on my food. The food was lovely, although the portions were huge, even by North American standards. It was a really nice evening, though, and we stayed around chatting long into the night as I tried to manage just one more mouthful of cheesecake.

Granville Island, Gastown and Mount Pleasant

Yesterday morning, I decided it was time to see a bit of the south-west side of Vancouver's waterfront, so I ran along the jogging path past Sunset Beach and into Stanley Park, where I paused at Third Beach to stretch before running back to my hotel via a caffeine stop at Timbertrain Coffee Roasters on West Cordova for a most excellent pourover made using a gorgeous copper-coloured Kalita dripper.

We then took a taxi over to Granville Island, a small artsy island — peninsula, really — to the southwest of downtown Vancouver. Granville is part Sausalito, part Brighton: it's small and filled with independent shops, art galleries and a great food market. I practised my Japanese with some chocolatiers in the market, and window shopped in the great book store and stationery shop, and may have picked up a few snacks. The market is a great place for lunch, as is Edible Canada, which does a great brunch at the weekend (maple bacon flapjacks, anyone?).

To get back to downtown, we took the sea-bus. Tiny boats, seating 12 people, nip back and forth between the island and various stops on both sides of the bay closer to the city centre. We got off near Gastown and filled up with a great southern barbecue feast at Peckinpah. The "little bit of everything" combo, which included pulled pork, beef brisket, pork ribs, cornbread, baked beans and fries, was way too filling for two people, but really good.

To try to walk off some of my lunch, I headed to the South Main (SoMa) area, which is about 30 minutes' walk down Main Street from Gastown. It's up quite a steep hill and the first part of the walk isn't very interesting, so you may wish to get one of the many blue buses that run up and down the street. I was heading for 49th Parallel, one of the best coffee shops in town — you can see their beans in their duck-egg blue bags at a number of other cafés around town. The. Main Street branch (at East 13th Street) also hosts Lucky's Doughnuts and I may have sampled one of the huge but delicious peanut butter and jelly doughnuts. I was sad to find that 49th Parallel didn't served hand-brewed filter coffee, so I had an americano (served in a cup in the same duck-egg blue), which was pretty good.

For about ten blocks south of Broadway, Main Street is bursting at the seams with independent shops and restaurants. I liked Pulp Fiction (used books), 8th + Main (clothing boutique), Hach + Hart (clothes, accessories and homewares), and Bird on a Wire Creations (jewellery, bath products and gifts), but there are plenty of other interesting places to discover too. The side streets are supposed to harbour even more shopping and eating destinations, but I had to head back down the hill to change for dinner.

It's lucky that I'm far from being tired of fish, as dinner was at Coast, a seafood restaurant on Alberni in downtown. We shared a huge platter of sushi and sashimi to start (Vancouver is as good as some parts of Japan for sushi, and it's definitely cheaper here), followed by a grilled cod main course. I really didn't have room for pudding but we shared the chef's decadent selection: macarons, chocolate truffles, hand-made gummies, and various other sweet treats. What a feast!

Tomorrow, we are headed to Saskatoon for the wedding. I've really enjoyed my time in Vancouver and I'm glad I get to spend most of the day here on Monday, in between my two flights. I'm hoping to hit one of the beaches, the original branch of Lululemon and a couple more of the coffee bars on my list.