It’s a stimulating time to be in Toronto. Since Sprudge’s 2019 guide to coffee in Canada’s largest city—the fourth-largest in North America—Sprudgeworthy cafes have emerged anew and others have evolved. In the post-pandemic, global tariff war-weathering era, many are emphasizing conscientiousness and pragmatism. Their approach applies as much to sourcing specialty coffee as to fostering community spaces that are simultaneously special-interest and inclusive. This is the perfect moment to check in fresh on where to drink coffee in Toronto today.
Meanwhile, it’s worthing noting the wider events and policy changes that have progressively shaped everyday life in the city. Since late 2018, regularized cannabis sales have become so smooth that the experience of buying weed is akin to ordering bubble tea. In 2023, the city elected Oliva Chow as mayor, the first Asian woman to take the role. In 2024, drinking alcohol in public parks became legal (mind your empties!). And through it all, Toronto’s hallmark trait has remained its multicultural, multinational society—51.2% of the population was born outside Canada—with many residents, cafe owners included, wholeheartedly supporting the recent buy-Canadian movement and putting their money where their maple leaf is.
De Mello
Sprudge’s initial mentions of De Mello were in passing, as a micro-roaster supplying Toronto’s discerning early adopters. Now a decade later, the Ontario-based business is booming, to the point that “micro” seems a misnomer. This is all the result of an ambitiously glocal vision of two Korean-born, Melbourne-educated brothers who on a visit to their Canadian-dwelling parents had “found out that coffee culture is really, really lacking in Toronto,” as CEO Felix Cha recalls, and “thought: ‘I can do better coffee.’”
By 2013, Cha and his brother, De Mello CFO Won Cha, had launched their first location—a cozy cave of a cafe at 2489 Yonge Street, where roasting green beans ensued. Today the company has its own roasting facility in the suburb of Vaughn, with mass markets among its customers, and five cafes, including one in Seoul (a second is due to open in South Korea later this year) and a spectacular new Toronto flagship.
Opened in 2023, De Mello The Well is not the only source for coffee in the city’s marquee mixed-use development the size of six football fields. However, its conspicuous placement in the lobby signals how far specialty coffee has come in Toronto. Felix Cha estimates the bar gets 700 customers a day.
The menu here mirrors De Mello’s other locations, serving its own array of blends and single origins (a welcome price breakdown is given per coffee on the webshop), seasonal drinks, and pastries. Surely, what sets this spot apart is the dramatically backlit Horangi tiger mascot, those citrus-palette curves enlivening the greige of so much contemporary institutional design.
Fika
Kensington Market is a showpiece tile of a neighborhood in the gastronomic mosaic that is the Greater Toronto Area—and Fika Cafe fits right in. Restaurateurs established it as a Swedish-inspired brunch spot in 2013, but two years later, Yadi Arifin became owner, ensuring the cafe would fulfill its nominal imperative.
Arifin’s roots are not Scandinavian—he was born in Jakarta, grew up in Singapore, attended high school in Vancouver, and went to university in Toronto, followed by a seven-year career in pastry. Yet, he did his due diligence across Stockholm, Malmo, and Copenhagen, and in 2017 won the Toronto AeroPress Championship.
Fika’s high hygge factor infuses the first floor, front deck, and back patio of a quintessentially Old Toronto bay-and-gable painted turquoise. Baking takes place in the basement kitchen; crowd-pleasers include Dala horse-shaped ginger snap cookies and cardamom-forward cinnamon buns, whose form represents only one of many Nordic varieties, acknowledges Arifin. “We just do the twist, which is very classic.”
Though Fika has been known to serve coffees from Scandinavia, nowadays the focus is on Canadian roasters, such as Quietly, Hatch, Phil & Sebastian, and—hyperlocal—Lycka Coffee Roasters. That’s the brand under which Arifin himself began roasting this year. “I got this because it fits perfectly in my little space here,” he says of the Stronghold S7X in a corner of the backroom. “It’s like a toy.” But three roasts sampled by Sprudge suggest that Arifin is not playing games and Lycka is delivering on its name, the Swedish word for “happiness.”
Rooms
Its Scooby-Doo eyes-in-the-dark logo is apt since Rooms knows how to set a scene in which to be seen. But the company’s new flagship, open since last summer on Baldwin Street, is also a place to listen.
Kitty-corner to the espresso bar is a DJ booth-meets-pour-over bar. The hi-fi sound system—a McIntosh amplifier, vintage Pioneer tape deck, and duo of Technics turntables—is within arm’s reach of a Mahlkönig grinder and April plastic brewers. Variously sized speakers carry sound across the long space’s five seating zones—it was jazz funk during a recent visit. A daytime DJ plays weekends; weekdays, baristas flip records between drips.
Coffee comes from SEY, La Cabra, and, lately, Rooms itself. What began as an in-house sample roasting project a couple years ago has become part of the brand, now handled by an external roaster—the house espresso is a medium roast from Brazil. There are pastries and, more adventurously, non-coffee drinks, such as a seasonal Sakura Fizz that goes down like yuzu-flavored cotton candy.
Today four Rooms operate in Toronto and one in Halifax, each embracing its own hyphenated cultural-identity aesthetic. The interior of the first location, on Ossington Street, nods to the traditional Chinese living room of his grandparents’ house, says Shun Yu, who, like co-owner, Nigel Wang, is originally from China. On Dupont Street, the Japanese listening lounge-inspired cafe becomes a cocktail bar at night. The one that doubles as the retail flagship for men’s resort wear Bather channels a Southern California beach town but is much closer, on Dufferin Street.
Fix Coffee + Bikes
Last year, the second location of Fix Coffee + Bikes appeared on Sprudge as a fresh buildout. Today it’s a fixture on the upper-ground level at The Well, where the dual-service shop distinguishes itself from the sprawling downtown mall’s other watering holes: Fix is as serious about your caffeine fix as fixing your bike.
While mechanics and bike gear fill the wings of the space, a barista commands the elegant central slab of a bar with a Mavam undercounter two-group espresso machine. Coffee comes from Canadian partners Java Roasters, The Angry Roaster, Quietly, and Epoch Chemistry. Carb-dense snacks are home-made, but not here; a cargo bike transports them from Fix’s original location, on Gladstone Street.
This first venue, which opened in 2017 in Little Portugal (the prior owners’ “mercearia” sign still hangs over the door), features an identical Mavam and coffee program as well as a kitchen serving more substantial fare. The liquor license allows in local craft beers and ciders, which, also thanks to the roomier real estate, can be consumed from the sun-bathed sidewalk seating or while viewing stage races that the cafe regularly screens.
Fix’s equal commitment to coffee and bikes is unique yet especially relevant in Toronto, a city whose cycling advocates are currently in a battle to preserve bike lanes. “My one year living in Amsterdam inspired the business concept,” owner Fred Sztabinski shares, additionally citing “the strong cafe culture Amsterdam has” plus “the ubiquitous bike culture throughout the Netherlands, and cute little neighbourhood bike shops that focus on repairs and service.”
Another Land Coffee and More
Until Another Land Coffee and More opened in 2019, the most notable coffee news in Willowdale, a neighborhood in the city’s North York district, might have been that York Cemetery is the final resting spot of Tim Horton. Thankfully, Another Land is very much alive.
Last summer, after its five-year lease expired, the cafe moved to a ground-floor location in the same strip mall. In this better accessible space, co-founding best friends Hong Dai and Pony Ma are making good on the “more” in the business name. Seating choices have broadened to include an espresso bar that transitions into a diner counter and a second bar overseeing the open kitchen, where Dai’s chef husband dreams up weekday $15 pre-fixed three-course lunches.
What’s more, Another Land has become no-tipping. Asked about the policy, Dai says: “I often found myself [selecting the option to] skip the tips for customers because I feel like overall, we’ve become a friend, and I don’t feel like you should tip your friend.” In an extension of that hospitality, on Fridays and Saturday the venue hosts Chez Wa, a friend’s pop-up restaurant, which avails of the liquor license to serve sake and natural wines.
Drawing from a range of Canadian roasters including Rogue Wave, Hatch, and Rocanini, the coffee is consistently well prepared. Lately, the osmanthus latte is a popular signature drink—its dried fragrant flower “really reminds me of home,” says Dai, who is originally from Zhengzhou, China, and once ran a specialty coffee school in Xiamen. In short, Another Land is another world well worth visiting.
Karina Hof is a freelance journalist based in Toronto. Read more Karina Hof on Sprudge.
