302 West Hastings Street, Vancouver (Gastown)
One of the most interesting coffee shops that I have been in within the Gastown neighbourhood! Nemesis Coffee, located right next to Victory Square park, is housed inside the new SFU graduate residence building on the ground floor. With their tagline being "creating coffee culture", the first word that comes to mind after going to Nemsis is pretentious. It is a completely different coffee experience, and it requires a lot of coffee culture know-how. It perhaps is more advanced than palces like nearby Revolver or Timbertrain. The layout of the shop is quite clever and the first of its kind in the area to optimze itself for maximum exposure to their products. Instead of one front counter, there is a gigantic island, with the till right at the door that shows off a wide array of baked goods. After you order, you walk around the island to wait for your drink and food, while facing a huge wall stuffed with Nemesis merchandise (cups, shirts, hats and the like). You can also see into the kitchen where they make their sandwich and toast plates. I ended up having their drip coffee, not wanting to venture into anything that I was unsure about, and had their avocado toast as well. The toast was AMAZING - I never thought it could get any better than what it was. It was really fresh and flavourful, and the pairing with ricotta cheese was perfect. Definitely a must-get if you're hungry! The interior of the shop is also really simplistic and everything that a typical coffee shop is - lots of wood, clean white walls and brilliant greenery everywhere.
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221 Abbott Street, Vancouver (Gastown) I had the opportunity to check out this beautiful tea house the other day with my friend Erika. Gastown is dominated with coffee roasters and shops, but on Abbott Street there is the lovely Capilano Tea House that serves up organic teas and house made, small batch botanical sodas along with traditional savoury and sweet food offerings - a refreshing and delicious alternative if you aren't feeling coffee! The interior of the store is, in a word, adorable: strong brick walls with wooden and clean white furniture. There are lovely flowers and packs of tea for sale sitting on the shelves that line the store. It is a tiny store that could potentially seat just under 20 cozily packed people, with one long wooden table and a little window side bench. I went on a hot day, and Erika and I enjoyed the refreshing and cool taste of their rose lemonade - it was refreshing, light, and a gorgeous baby pink colour. Topped with rose petals, it was an interesting twist to traditional lemonade that was in no way sour - it was great. Along with that, I had a mini mixed berry crumble in a jar, which was so, so good! I really loved the tartness of the berries and the cute portion size. The only downside is that they don't list out prices for their drink/food items, so you have no idea how much you have spent until it is rung up for you. The rose lemonade and the berry crumble came to just over $13 together, which was a shock to me. Since it was a first time, I decided to just suck it up, though next time I probably will just stick to drinks and maybe have food if I am really, really desperate or intrigued. All in all, if you aren't into having coffee that day, go check out Capilano Tea House and have one of their teas. It's a super cute place, so get ready to take tons of pictures! ***** OCTOBER 1, 2016 UPDATE: Due to high rent, Capilano Tea House is closing their Gastown location down. Sad to see such a unique place go because of high rent costs. ***** |
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