Isn't This a Cute Coffee Shop? Let's Go In!

Look at this picture from a cute, hip coffee shop in a newly-gentrified neighbourhood:

Cute, no? That's two espressos and a caramel brownie right there. 

The place had a children's corner where all the newly-moved-in hipsters could let their kids play with educational toys and read educational books while they had their coffees and cakes and paninis made with natural, locally-sourced, organic ingredients and only the best roasted beans.

The brownie was good. 

The coffee though...what can one say about the coffee?

How about: OMIGOD THIS WAS THE WORST COFFEE I EVER HAD!

Seriously, it was disgusting. Neither of us could drink it. It tasted like when you accidentally put Taster's Choice coffee into a stovetop espresso machine (yes, this has happened to me). In fact, it tasted worse than Taster's Choice instant coffee.

This was surprising since the entire coffee-making process was automated. They had a fully automatic push-button espresso machine. The grinder and doser were automated, grinding and dosing out the exact amount of coffee for a single shot at the push of a button. 

The only variables were the beans and the tamping. They over-tamped the coffee, but that couldn't explain the awfulness of the stuff. No, the awfulness had to have come from the beans or the grind. My guess is that the beans were bad/stale, and the grind was too coarse. 

But that doesn't really matter, does it? Because the fact remained that we paid $5 for undrinkable espressos.

Latkes with a Heaping Side Order of Hipster

Stupid Whatever S phone!  I took pictures of this musical buffet brunch and then the stupid phone lost them.  Actually, it lost a whole bunch of photos.  I had no idea where they were, but I knew I hadn't deleted them.  I had to mount the stupid phone onto my machine to retrieve the damned pictures.  Stupid Whatever S phone!

All this to say that I didn't get around to writing about this brunch until now.

Back when The Spousal Unit and I were young and child-free, we used to go to this place for shows on a semi-regular basis.  It's in a "bohemian" (read: filthy and decrepit) neighbourhood that is quasi-famous in Canada thanks to a short-lived early-80s sitcom.  Of course in the 80s the neighbourhood was "ethnic" and there was an actual market.  Or so I'm told. 

Now the place is just filthy and full of hipsters who long for an "authentic" "ethnic" experience.  Of course, I never realized this until I went there for brunch recently.

The World's Tiniest Latkes shared the table with The World's Tiniest Slivers of Dessert

I was there to watch a friend's band play.  They're really good and they aren't hipster authentic by any stretch of the imagination.  They're actually old guys who've been playing together for ages and are probably the farthest things from hipsters you can get.  I have no problem with them or their music. Hence why they're my friends.

Anyways.

The brunch.  It's a "yiddish" brunch.  And a bunch of hipsters go there for an "authentic" "Jewish" "experience".  It's very ironic and meta.  Everyone's there in their fanciest shitty cloths, eating The World's Tiniest Latkes and The World's Tiniest Slices of Dessert, feeling all self-congratulatory about their choice of eating establishment because it shows that they're, you know, urbane and shit.

The food was OK, but I was woefully inappropriately dressed for brunch.