Big changes are afoot for Sense Appeal, the cafe and coffee roaster that touted locations on Spadina and Lake Shore Blvd. in Etobicoke. Co-owners Peter Adamo and Roberto Rota are parting ways.

The long term future of the massive west end location (home to coffee roasting operations, as well as a bakery and catering kitchen) is unclear, but it's closed to the public for the foreseeable future, leaving only the downtown cafe open.

Meanwhile Adamo is happy to share his plans. He intends to open his own roasting facilities somewhere downtown as well as a sensory lab and test kitchen in the west end. There are no names or addresses currently attached to the projects, but the intent is to offer an exploratory coffee experience, with siphon, aero press, and pour overs, as well as an integrated food program.

On the surface it doesn't sound all that original, but when Adamo describes the finer points of exploring the local environment and gets into the food science aspects, it starts sounding like Toronto's own version of Noma or one of David Chang's kitchen labs. One current project in the works will see coffee brewed with water purified from maple and birch sap tapped in the Hockley Valley.

The closure of Sense Appeal Lake Shore will certainly be a loss for the neighbourhood (not just the coffee, but the club sandwiches), but it sounds like overall, Toronto's coffee scene is about to get a little more interesting.