By: Sara Brinkac, Humour Editor
1. Black Coffee
An easy Top Ten contender, this café provides Vancouver coffee lovers the simplicity they’re sometimes looking for. By stripping down all the parts of the business, including their menu, Black Coffee tells the customer exactly what they’re getting and how they’re getting it.
Cost of a 12 oz. cup: $5.75
2. The Hot Spot
Both a Hot Spot for coffee lovers and a literal hot spot due to its being located in an infrared yoga studio, this establishment is Vancouver’s favourite multi-activity café. The Hot Spot’s one of a kind studio allows customers to sip a cup of rainwater brewed tea from the inner peace of their yoga mat, and it’s delightful. Once you come you’ll want to nama-stay forever.
Cost of a 12 oz. cup: $10.75
3. Farmer’s Table
While all Vancouver cafés care about ethically sourced ingredients, only Farmer’s Table is committed to a completely locally sourced venture. With each bean strenuously grown in BC’s coffee resistant climate and each table handcrafted by confused farmers, Farmer’s Table is handcrafted through and through. As soon as you walk into this café you know it was built with the bare, amateur hands of Vancouverites committed to the cause of “local.”
Cost of a 12 oz. cup: $15.00
4. The Temperate Forest Café
If there’s one thing Vancouver loves in it’s cafés, it’s plants. And lots of them. Literally taking from BC’s own temperate rainforest, this café is adorned with the most rare and beautiful plants nature has to offer. Grab your friends head down to Mount Pleasant and try our personal favourite roast “bold growth forests.”
Cost for a 12 oz. cup: $8.50
5. gęñtrįfÿ
Taking a page out of Black Coffee’s playbook, this café makes its business model clear in its name. Opening sterile, modern locations in all of Vancouver’s character communities, gęñtrįfÿ has caught the attention of coffee trend followers everywhere. With a European look and baristas that clear citizens from the premises, this café is the perfect place to go when you want to drink up the future of our city.
Cost for a 12 oz. cup: $13.50
6. Unparalleled Roasters
“We keep seeing businesses using 49th parallel in their names for some reason,” says café owner T. Kups. “We didn’t want to confine ourselves to 49/100, we wanted to go above and beyond a cup of coffee.” And beyond a cup of coffee they have gone. With a beverage menu of over 300 different drinks, Unparalleled Roasters quench Vancouver’s unbridled thirst for large quantities of options.
Cost for a 12 oz. cup: $6.50
7. The Miner’s Pan
While The Miner’s Pan has extremely mediocre food and coffee, we believe it’s their exquisitely Vancouver atmosphere that makes them an undeniable Top Ten pick. With raw wood, exposed light bulbs and a ceiling full of painted pipes, The Miner’s Pan reminds Vancouver of a nostalgic time we are constantly trying to revive. Personal favourites of the café atmosphere are the tin cups and literal miner’s pans they serve all their drinks and dishes in.
Cost for a 12 oz. cup: $11.00
8. Pet and Stay
This café was opened with four cats, a dozen dogs, 32 hamsters, and a dream. To be the snuggliest, calmest, most hair-balled café in Vancouver. And they’ve achieved just that. Not only do frequenters of the café lovingly pet, they also insist on staying indefinitely because they “just can’t say goodbye” to the adorable, unadoptable animals.
Cost for a 12 oz. cup: $10.25
9. jacques
Totally French, totally cool, totally jacques. With monotone music by French bands you’ve never heard of and blurry photographs of naked bodies in various positions hung on the walls, this café has the most undeniably cool atmosphere in town. You can’t help but just want to be a part of the jaques crowd, whatever the cost.
Cost for a 12 oz. cup: $16.00
10. Light Room
Finally the café everyone in Vancouver has been waiting for — a place completely dedicated to perfect lighting. With warm overhead tones and complimentary ring lights per table, it’s impossible to take an unflattering picture in Light Room. So grab your friend, order a cup of their famously complex latte art and start posing today.
Cost for a 12 oz. cup: $18.50
