Cafes
Capital Espresso
Capital Espresso is a pleasant sight on the gloomy Saturday morning when my friend and I decide to meet early to check out what Parkdale's newest cafe has to offer. Just opened in the former Vice Magazine office on the corner of Queen and Dunn, the all-glass exterior reveals a warm, welcoming interior, and as we enter from the rainy outdoors, we're greeted by the uplifting scent of coffee and freshly baked muffins.
For fellow Parkdalians and coffee shop dwellers, there may be some familiar faces behind the bar at Capital. Owners Damien, Alex and Maggie were until recently tending to the caffeine deprived at Blondie's down the street, renting the bar as a coffee shop by day. Regardless of the telltale espresso machine, Blondie's dark bar and black furniture had an appearance that was distinctively more night club than cafe, and co-owner Damien explains that the trio fell in love with the old Vice space and decided it was time to open a place of their own.
Capital's interior is reasonably large and open, but the exposed brick, wood floors and big couch in the front make it feel cozy. A row of blonde wood tables line one side of the room, and a few stools allow for some bar seating in front of the small kitchen set-up from which they prepare their fresh-daily snacks. The cafe might be professional in appearance, but something about the atmosphere makes it feel sort of like someone's living room as neighbourhood regulars perch in the dormer windows and cozy up in corners with their coffees, books and laptops.
The drink menu offers all your regular espresso drinks, as well as French press, loose-leaf teas and Italian sodas, and though the food menu alludes only to unidentified muffins and cookies, I get the feeling that customers are surprised daily with whatever interesting treats the baker decides to prepare.
My friend and I start by ordering an espresso ($2.25) and a cappuccino ($3.25) and it becomes immediately obvious that Damien is very much at home in front of an espresso machine. With him and Alex having acquired over ten years of barista experience, including stints at some of the city's favourite espresso bars - Te Aro, Dark Horse and Mercury to name a few - it's safe to say these guys know their coffee, and are very passionate about what they do.
After grinding the five-bean blend from Origins Coffee Company, an artisan roastery in Granville Island, the La Marzocco espresso machine is put to work, and moments later out comes my single espresso shot. I quickly make my way over to the counter where I drop a spoonful of raw sugar onto the espresso and watch with pleasure as the sugar hovers on top of the thick crema for awhile before slowly sinking into the espresso, which proves to taste as delicious as it looks.
The cappuccino then appears on the bar lovingly decorated with a leaf pattern, the milk perfectly frothed. These coffees disappear extremely quickly, and we also order a couple of americanos ($2.50) to enjoy with our baked goods.
At so early an hour, not much has emerged from the oven, but a couple cooling racks on the counter hold fresh, still-warm blueberry bran and banana chocolate chip muffins. Co-owner Maggie, a Cordon Bleu Paris-trained pastry chef, uses all her own recipes for the baked goods, and today in her absence Alex is in the kitchen following the instructions for her rustic muffins.
I have some serious nostalgia for banana chocolate chip muffins; Not only were they one of my mom's specialties, they were also the first thing I ever baked on my own as a kid. There's nothing more comforting than food that brings back good childhood memories, and these large, moist muffins decorated with a sprinkling of chocolate chips are just how I hoped they would be.
Looking to grab a coffee and sample more of the baked goods, I stop by Capital a couple days later at a more appropriate hour to discover a counter full of delectable looking sweets. Sadly I'm without my butter tart-loving photographer when I discover three different kinds of butter tarts (all $2.50). The little cups come with classic plain filling, or prepared with the addition of walnuts or banana. I can't resist the banana, a tart with perfect pastry crust, sweet gooey filling, and the added flavour of a slice of banana baked into the middle.
I find myself headed home with a bag that also includes a dense vegan peanut butter chocolate chip cookie ($2), a warm, spicy pear and ginger muffin complete with chunks of pear throughout and a light glaze on top, and a hearty carrot coconut muffin (both $2.50). I leave convinced that Parkdale's bakery-deprived core finally has what I've been hoping for for a long time, a coffee shop that not only offers great coffee, but also lots of homemade treats.
On a corner currently housing a funeral home and a recently closed-down Blockbuster, I can't think of a more cheerful addition than Capital Espresso. In my humble opinion, Parkdale is made better and better with each new addition to the growing collection of shops, cafes and restaurants, and this spot is no exception. With its welcoming atmosphere, friendly staff and expertly prepared coffee and baked goods, Capital is sure to become a neighbourhood staple.
Writing by Meaghan Binstock. Photos by Taralyn Marshall.
Discussion
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Hanging out at cafes in the late evening is one of my favourite things to do. It seems not too many cafes around the city do that. Sad.
No time for Coffee Time
Nice work Capital!
alexd
TRIBE
I could agree, but have you even looked at the local roasters? We have some of the most discerning people in the world sourcing and roasting right here in this city- including the FIRST importer of Fair Trade coffee in Canada Merchants of Green Coffee who work with local roasters to get their green beans roasted.
Since coffee isn't grown here and is imported from all over the world, the notion that we don't/can't have good coffee imported to and roasted in Toronto is absurd.
To start, off the top of my head:
http://www.merchantsofgreencoffee.com
http://www.darkcitycoffee.com
http://www.freshcoffeenetwork.com (these guys are used by gourmet chefs all over the city- but hey- probably not very good)
Of course, there are a number of other smaller folks doing it well, Te Aro, I Deal Coffee etc. If you know of more, list them here!
As for all of the roaster talk - there are great local artisan roasters in Toronto - Social, Te Aro, Detour, and now Sense Appeal. At the same time, I enjoy having some of the best roasters from around North America featured here in Toronto - diversity is fun enjoy it. Would you enjoy just drinking Ontario wines because of the carbon footprint. Live a little.
While yes, perhaps there is some roasters around the city that deserve praise. I can tell you that most of them do not reach the standard that is expected in current third wave shops. If you want to open a cafe and just make money, then sure get your stuff locally, I encourage that completely. But if you want to have a signature, something that sets you apart from all the other "indie" shops, then you need to go beyond the status quo. We, as coffee drinkers would be bored to death if all that was served was Dark City or Te Aro in every store in town. It's boring, and because coffee is a completely personal preference, there needs to be variety. There is simply not enough roasters in the city offering what the Owners, Baristi, and Customers are looking for. It sucks that we have to create such a footprint, but when coffee is an art, like it is to a lot of us, you need to think of personal taste and preference.
I think it's also symptomatic of the provincial mindset here in TO that people deign to chime in about better local options when they obviously lack knowledge and credibility. Sam, I'm not talking about you here, I'm referring to the poor misguided fellow that suggested Capital have their coffee ground elsewhere. Some people are not meant to be critics.
As for top chefs, I never order coffee in a restaurant. With very exceptions, coffee is an after thought for a chef that is served with dessert.
Additionally, in my humble opinion, I have to disagree that Merchants of Green Coffee, Fresh Coffee Network and Dark City are in the top tier in the city. I would much sooner put Social, Detour, Te Aro, and from what I've heard Sense Appeal into this top tier.
As to comparing these roasters to the likes of Stumptown, 49th Parallel Roasters and Intelligentsia, I don't think this can be fairly done. I do think the quality and the product of the new upcoming Toronto roasters should be celebrated and enjoyed as I've had some wonderful coffees from all of the ones that I mentioned. I look forward to see how these roasters blossom as I know some of them have their sites set on this top tier.
as for the reviewers line:
"I leave convinced that Parkdale's bakery-deprived core finally has what I've been hoping for for a long time, a coffee shop that not only offers great coffee, but also lots of homemade treats."
"Bakery-deprived" ??
While the coffee isn't as good at Brown Sugar, the selection of baked goods is far superior. Or at least it was compared to my first visit to Capital.
Coffee shop owners ruin comments feeds.
Try to make it less obvious
You did not.
Try to contribute
Although, I asked about coffee shops/cafes being open later, and I guess there's a dead-zone from about 5-8 where not much would be sold, so perhaps it's not really a sustainable thing to do from an income point of view.
I loved the one about, that noone drinks the coffee after 7 p.m. ... and after that time they just sit and use wierless...
that is a huge problem - we are losing the ability to communicate as we keep twittering or facebooking 24/7. I wish the wierless would be banned from coffee shops. So people could talk! Not type!!!
once you leave, they all talk to each other, because there is no longer 'that guy to avoid eye contact with'.
Most of them claim that the beans are "not up to snuff", in other words they're just not good enough to sell to our collective discerning coffee palates. Let's be real here: most people are ordering americanos (which they promptly fill with cream and sugar) or milk-based espresso beverages (which is mostly filled with milk, and later probably some sugar as well). If you were actually concerned with the taste of your product you'd be as concerned about the source of your water as well as the source of your milk and sugar. Last I checked, nobody is importing specialty sugars or the best possible milk. Nor is any coffee shop using some difficult to find mineral water, or employing some sophisticated filtering process to ensure high quality water. Afterall, if most of my drink is water or milk you'd think that you'd start there if you were really concerned with the quality of the coffee.
Even for those of us that do order espresso or drink our coffee black, we need to really concentrate on what we're drinking in order to be able to appraise those supposed quality differences between the Vancouver roaster and Toronto roaster. No offence, but that happens probably less than 1 in 10 times.
So, unless you're coffee shop is specifically directed at the 1 in 100 people that meet those criteria I doubt it will really matter whether you're sourcing your beans from quality roasters here or elsewhere.
But let's be real here, what you're actually worried about is the coffee shop narrative, something along the lines of: "our award-winning barristas only use the finest beans imported from Columbia and subsequently roasted in the lush verdant forests of our nation west coast." etc. Now, obviously you can't reveal that what you're cultivating is merely an image because that would send the entire project crashing down. However, lying online isn't going to help you either. Your best option would have been to just ignore the nay-sayers.
The end.
He didn't even utter a single word. Not one.
Might be a reason why there was only 2 people in the place.
Lose the f--ing attitude...
I'll spend my money somewhere else.