Joanne Sasvari
Sun
‘We’re pretty much the barista hangout in the city,’ says Vince Piccolo. Photograph by : Ian Lindsay, Vancouver Sun
AT A GLANCE
49th Parallel Coffee Roasters is at 2152 West Fourth Ave., 604-420-4901, www.49thparallelroasters.com.
For more info on Krups and the other cities in the Krups Kup of Excellence, visit www.krups.ca. To learn more about the Canadian Barista Championships, go to www.coffeeteashow.ca/barista_championship.html.
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A year ago, Vince Piccolo had barely opened the doors to his chic little Kitsilano café when it was named the best coffee shop in town.
This week, 49th Parallel Coffee Roasters won the Krups Kup of Excellence again, proving that last year’s win was no single-shot wonder.
“It’s really nice. It really surprises me. I know we try our best, but I don’t know what our competitors are doing out there,” says Piccolo who is as busy running his international wholesale coffee business as he is with the cafe.
He may not have time to try the java at the city’s countless Artigianos and JJ Beans and Starbucks, but that’s not stopping other baristas from pulling up a seat in his turquoise-and-chocolate-accented shop on Fourth Avenue.
“We’re pretty much the barista hangout in the city,” Piccolo says with a laugh. “We must be doing something right if they’re all coming here.”
Piccolo isn’t the only one who’s doing something right in this coffee-loving city.
In a country crazy for coffee — Canadians drink an average of 86 litres a year each of the dark brew — Vancouverites have a special relationship with their caffeine. In fact, the organizers of the Krups Kup, which is also being held in Calgary, Toronto, Montreal and Halifax this month, consider Vancouver the “most accelerated coffee culture” in Canada.
(Krups, which is best known for manufacturing coffee makers for home use, also sponsors the Canadian Barista Championships Oct. 21 and 22 in Toronto; Piccolo’s brother Sammy, already a three-time Canadian champion and world champion finalist, will be representing Western Canada.)
This is the third year the Krups Kup has been held in Vancouver. This year’s team of judges, comprising sommeliers, chefs and media, including this writer, visited six percolating hotspots to sip the espresso and sample the scene. They evaluated each place on décor, staff, presentation and, of course, the taste of the coffee.
Each café had its strengths: for instance, Prado, with its elegantly stripped-down décor, added a cool chic to Commercial Drive, while JJ Bean offered great coffee in a casual setting on Main Street, and the Elysian Room at 5th and Burrard was one of the coziest hangouts around.
Meanwhile, over on Hornby Street, the bustling Café Artigiano had last year’s national champion barista Michael Yung leading his team in making quality coffees, fast, for the busy downtown crowd.
“There’s a lot of really great coffee connoisseurs in town,” Yung says. “They have a real appreciation for the craft of the drink.”
The surprise of the day was a funky new joint called Gene in the pointy building at the equally pointy intersection of Main and Kingsway. This understatedly urban coffee shop produced some of the best espresso of the contest — deep, dark and rich, with a luscious crema and no bitterness at all.
But at the end of the end of the day, it was 49th Parallel, with its obsessive attention to detail, that proved a winner again.
“Our whole focus is on how it tastes in the cup,” Piccolo says.
Reflecting back over the past year, he notes, “A year ago, nobody knew who we were. Now we’re a very, very busy little café.”
© The Vancouver Sun 2008
