Morning Coffee #1: Caffè Beano
Morning Coffee is a new series that will focus on cafés around the world.
Caffè Beano in late December, Calgary
Date muffins. I am craving date muffins, because there are few places in this world that make date muffins as good as those at Caffè Beano. But Caffè Beano is 4,090 kilometres from my front door. Google Maps tells me it will take 50 hours of driving to get there. I can’t even imagine how long that would take to walk.
I live in Montreal, you see, but Caffè Beano is in Calgary, tucked away between an ice cream parlour and a barber’s shop near 17th Avenue. I grew up in Calgary and, whenever I go back to visit family, I make a daily pilgrimmage to this small coffee shop with its awkward layout and black-and-white tiled floors. Its prices are reasonable ($2.50 for a café au lait; $1.75 for those date muffins) but that isn’t what compels me to visit. It isn’t the ambiance, either, the warm, convivial atmosphere that spills onto the sidewalk outside. No, the real reason I go to Caffè Beano is nostalgia.
I was a high school student when I first discovered Caffè Beano. I had known about it before, when I was younger, but somehow its dark wood and grown-up stares intimidated me. It wasn’t until I was in Grade 11 that I first started visiting it during my morning break to sip a coffee and read the Globe and Mail. I liked it then for the same reasons it had scared me as a child: in a city that seemed so hopelessly isolated from the places for which I longed, Caffè Beano was an island of sophistication in a dull sea of bad architecture and boring strip malls. For an hour or so each day, until my coffee grew cold or I had to return to class, it felt like I was somewhere else, somewhere I wanted to be.
Caffè Beano wasn’t just an outlet for my malaise, however. It was an anchor, a place I could feel at home in a city I wanted to leave. My last summer in Calgary was romantic. By then I knew I was leaving for Montreal and, relieved of the pressure I felt to get away, I was able to relax and enjoy what time I had left in my hometown. I made new friends, worked at the university radio station, was interviewed by the CBC, marched in protests and attended concerts. I became smitten with an embarrassing number of women, the summer sun falling too softly on their faces to resist. The whole city seemed to explode in a frenzy of activity that seemed wholly unbecoming of its conservative character. It was as if Calgary, too, was enjoying the climax of its adolescence.
And all the while, during this farewell tour of a summer, there was Caffè Beano and its red sidewalk benches, where I would sit on long summer evenings and sip iced Vietnamese coffees. I didn’t think I would miss it then, but I do. Now, when I go back, I make a point to sit on those benches, watching the people around me. The crowd hasn’t changed much, still the same eclectic mix of people, except for a group of Russian men for whom Beano has become a hangout. One or another always seems to be there and, inevitably, a few friends will drop by to say hello and chat over a drink. It’s hard to imagine what experience they might share with a high school kid born and raised in Calgary, eager to depart, but maybe, just maybe, Caffè Beano is to them what it was for me: a refuge, an intimate embrace, a promise of dreams fulfilled.
Montreal Apartments
Ken Gildner says:
Ah, an ode to the coffeehouse. I feel the very same way about my daily hangout here in Ottawa, Bridgehead. There’s some kind of failsafe comfort in having a place to visit every day where a warm black brew and a group of friendly folk await you… The social potential of true coffeehouses (most Starbucks and Second Cups don’t count) are immense.
Ahh!
October 2nd, 2006 at 9:51 am
Christopher DeWolf says:
I had a feeling you would be the first one to post a comment to this, Ken!
October 2nd, 2006 at 11:50 am
Ethan Bayne says:
Very evocative writing. I note that the picture was taken in late December - Calgarians are a hardy lot indeed to brave the outdoors at that time of year. Perhaps we Edmontonians do not give them enough credit. Or are these all the smokers? I like the alcove effect created by the benches, though I am kind of surprised the city allows them perpendicular to the sidewalk like that.
I am also struck by a bit of embarrassment: even after reading this paean to the independent coffeehouse and its inimitable date muffins, and even after seeing Ken cast aspersions on the coffee chains, I must admit that I occasionally indulge in a cherry cheese danish from (ahem) Tim Horton’s, and I have yet to find anything to match it (on this side of the pond, anyway). Is that so wrong?
Finally, a minor quibble - you have entitled this new series “Morning Coffee,” but as a fervent worshipper of the sacred bean, I assure you that it may be savoured at all hours, day or night, with no ill effects.
October 2nd, 2006 at 3:47 pm
Christopher DeWolf says:
There’s no shame in Timmy’s. Even a double-double is okay now and again, but order a triple-triple and you’ve crossed the line. I guess it’s okay if you’re a Maritimer, though, because then it would be part of your cultural heritage.
Calgarians aren’t that tough. I’m not sure what the weather was like in Edmonton last winter, but when I took this photo of Caffè Beano in December, it was something like 14 degrees out — a spring day, in other words. There wasn’t even any snow on the ground. It was above freezing the entire week I was in Calgary, which was a bit shocking. It led me to wonder whether Calgarians had bought a new climate with all of their oil money.
October 3rd, 2006 at 3:05 am