But at the Wicked Cafe you’ll find a laid-back vibe for enjoying a cup made with top beans
Mia Stainsby
Sun
Manager Arthur Wynne serves a cappuccino. Photograph by : Ian Lindsay, Vancouver Sun
Wicked Cafe is a little off grid, just enough for False Creek condo dwellers to treat it like their private living room.
And if they like coffee — good coffee, that is — so much the better.
The place has been open for two years and owner, Brad Ford, takes coffee seriously. He took over the sole distribution of Intelligentsia Coffee when Caffe Artigiano changed hands last year; the coffee is from a single farm and he also buys top-of-the-crop auction lots (sort of like great vintage wines).
The corner cafe is turf for the laid back; it’s pumped with music (reggae, jazz, blues, funk, rock) and has a couple of sofas, mid-room, to plop back and read or chat with friends. You can order panini (made with bread from Mixx Bakery), muffins, croissants, scones or soup for sustenance and on weekends, you can try the sweet waffles with pearl sugar chunks that Ford went to Belgium to learn how to make.
There are four panini — smoked turkey on cranberry bread, spicy tuna, roasted veg, and spicy capicolla.
Manager Arthur Wynne is another coffee nutter. He passed the tough exams in Switzerland to qualify as a world barista judge and unless you’re ready for a verbal outpouring, don’t ask too many questions about coffee. He’s tutoring some of his customers on the subject of coffee — farming, elevation differences, varietals of coffee trees, roasting, aromas and flavours.
Wynne is the one blanketed in tattoos and has big holes in his ears.
“I had it done in Australia [he’s Australian]. It’s part of getting back to the lost art of body modification,” he says. “Tattooing, piercing, flesh tunnels, it’s a worldwide thing. I wear hardwood plugs with mother-of-pearl in my ear holes.”
I think I’ll pass. I have trouble enough inserting my pierced earrings with needle-thin prongs.
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WICKED CAFE
1399 West Seventh Ave., 604-733-9425, wickedcafe.ca