Two years ago, Toni Giordano and Elaine Bedell left their corporate jobs in Vancouver, got into a car, and drove around the United States for two months searching for inspiration. The women had grown tired of working for other people—Giordano at a mining company and Bedell at a nonprofit—and dreamed of opening a business of [...]

Let's face it: Toronto has a well-deserved reputation for clique-ishness. Previously, nifty new cafés with fancy snacks were reserved for hipsters, bloggers, and left-wing pinkos in general. Board games and other socialized geekery were confined to comic shops—which, no pun intended, aren't everyone's cup of tea—or the games cabinet of that one friend willing to step up and be the designated dork when someone's Catan needed Settlin'.

The former Allenby Theatre at 1213 Danforth Avenue. Customers in line at the recently opened Tim Hortons located in the gutted interior of the former Allenby Theatre [PDF] would be hard-pressed to imagine that for a time, the site was the Toronto epicentre of a North American movie craze. This occurred back in the mid-1970s, [...]

Coffee-making at Crafted by Te Aro (135 Ossington). With a Tim Hortons popping up in espresso-centric Little Italy and Starbucks sneaking its way into the Junction, neighbourhood coffee shops are in need of recognition just to stay in the brewing business. With that reality in mind, two coffee enthusiasts—who were previously uninvolved in the food [...]

Snakes and Lattes on Sunday evening, papered up in advance of its first day of business, which is today. Ben Castanie’s new Koreatown café, at 600 Bloor Street West, just east of Palmerston Avenue, will emphatically not have free Wi-Fi. In fact, laptops and their attendant air of isolation are completely counter to what Castanie [...]

297 Harbord Street, home of SJCB. Like clockwork, Sam James unloads the ceramic cups from his trolley to the gleaming Nuova Simonelli espresso machine, lines up four jars of Belleville milk—a pitcher for each judge—and decorates their table with a mason jar of red roses. Wiping, steaming, pouring, placing, his black boots move swiftly to [...]

Photo by Jesse Ship/Torontoist. Trudging up Spadina in the heart of Chinatown, you might have noticed Sonic and thought that either Uncle Jacob had some new competition, or that a piece of Kensington Market wound up on the wrong side of the block. Neither is the case: Sonic (60 Cecil Street), which officially launches on [...]

Now that the Obama Cafe is co-existing peacefully alongside the newly minted Bana Cybernet Ltd on the Danforth at Greenwood, Torontoist decided to stop by to see how Obama is faring in our fair city. Owner Emmanuel Debass came up with the idea for the café post-election, so he had to act quickly in order [...]

When is the new Dark Horse opening? For a fragment of the coffee-obsessed populace, the tease of a West Side Edition of the beloved café on Queen East became a mild obsession. The buzz began in January on Twitter, when word spread that co-owners Deanna Zunde and Ed Lynds would be expanding to a second [...]

Photo of sign above i deal coffee’s Kensington Market location by Michael D’Amico. Local latte mainstay i deal coffee is about to be sold. At least that’s the plan, according to founder and resident bean-master James Fortier. But while you would be forgiven for assuming that the decision to unload the company is because of [...]

The current issue of NOW may be focusing on coffee in general and where to get the best cup, but this is an informal grassroots study of Tim Hortons, which put “double-double” into the language (“A Canadian term used to describe how you take your coffee—two teaspoons of sugar and two creams. Preferably used in [...]