Off-Topic: Café Myriade

I'm a coffee geek. About half my kitchen is dedicated to espresso gear, and various tools for brewing filtered coffee, including a vacuum pot, and the newest addition, a cafe solo. Anyway, being a coffee geek, I also hang out with coffee geeks. And, it just so happens that the guy who taught me everything I know about coffee, competitive barista Anthony Benda, just opened his very own cafe.

If you like coffee, you owe it to yourself to check this place out. There's a huge difference between the crapstuff you get at starbucks (which we lovingly refer to as 'dirty water'), or even your local coffee shop, and what they're brewing over at Myriade.

The rest of this article is cross-posted from Daniel Haran's blog.

Daniel and I went to visit Cafe Myriade (praized page) for their Grand Opening. He grabbed this shot after a friendly latte art challenge:

Myriade is worth visiting if you care about either coffee or chocolate. Baristas Anthony Benda and Scott Rao are both obsessive about coffee: Anthony is a competitive barista and Scott is the author of The Professional Barista’s Handbook.

Seeing them at work refining techniques and recipes is amazing and inspiring; they had received a new type of coffee maker akin to a french press and were testing different quantities and steep times.

For chocolate fanatics this is the only retail spot I know of in Montreal that carries SOMA chocolate, including their hot chocolate. SOMA is one of only 2 chocolatiers in Canada that make their own chocolate; I religiously visit them every time I’m in Toronto.

One of Anthony’s signature drinks is a coffee with melted chocolate. For his last competition he tried over a dozen different chocolates to find the perfect fit. Rather than being satisfied with his choice, it only seems to have ignited another obsession.

Cafe Myriade is located at 1432 Mackay, close to Maisonneuve at Guy-Concordia.