Best Coffee House 2014

GOLD: 49th Parallel

Silver: Revolver | Bronze: Milano | Honourable Mentions: The Elysian Room, Matchstick

That colour palette of chocolate brown and robin’s egg blue has become city shorthand at more than 30 cafés for plugged-in bean programs, but Gold winner 49th Parallel’s roasts are best experienced on home turf. Both locations, East Side and West, combine sleek design with artisan doughnuts and-star attraction-direct-trade-sourced micro-lots lightly roasted for sweet, clean, sparkling flavours. A progressive, cerebral trendsetter, Revolver Coffee (Silver) curates a revolving roster of small-scale, seed-to-mug roasters. Our judges celebrated the single-cup flights: “What a great way to demonstrate this increasingly complex world!” (Good luck getting a seat there.) Milano Coffee (Bronze) was singled out for master blender (and owner) Brian Turko, whose bold, harmonious arrangements are somehow even greater than the sum of the individual beans. Zenful décor encourages caffeine contemplation.

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