Cafe23 ★8.9

Almost nothing about the front of Cafe23 prepares you for what sits behind it. From the pavement it reads as a narrow room with a counter, a few tables and deliberately low light. Then the room keeps going — past a back lounge, out through a door into a garden grown in around a Japanese maple, and up a staircase to a rooftop terrace that most first-timers do not know exists. In a part of the city where every square metre is spoken for, that hidden depth is the whole proposition, and it is why people who live five minutes away still treat a visit as an outing.

Highlights

• A two-level secret garden. A ground-floor patio built around a Japanese maple that has grown considerably since the yard opened, and above it a rooftop terrace with standing heaters, candles and wooden furniture — invisible from the street and from the front room.
• Open since February 2019, started by two business partners, Steve Lipari and Vanessa Sansonetti, and one of the few independents on this stretch that came through the pandemic years without going dark.
• The coffee is bought, not roasted here. Beans come from two Toronto roasteries, Hale Coffee and De Mello — an unusually plain thing for a café this decorative to say out loud, and a useful signal about where the effort actually goes.
• An interior assembled rather than designed: an upright piano, a long communal table, candelabras and birdcage lamps, antique mirrors, old concert posters, stacks of books and a serious quantity of greenery.
• Dogs are welcome, which is why the garden fills with them on warm weekends and why the room reads as a neighbourhood living room rather than a showroom.
• Nothing is baked on the premises. The pastry case is stocked from named bakeries, with Montreal bagels and a separate vegan supplier alongside the butter tarts — a bought-in programme, run without pretending otherwise.

What’s in the cup

Cafe23 does not roast, and does not claim to. It buys from two established Toronto roasteries, Hale Coffee and De Mello, and that decision shapes the cup more than any barista technique does. Both houses roast for a city where the default order arrives with milk, so the espresso here is built for body and sweetness rather than for the bright, tea-like acidity that a filter-led bar chases. A flat white or a cappuccino comes out balanced and unfussy, and it behaves the same way on a quiet Tuesday morning as it does when the garden is full.

The more distinctive half of the menu is the flavoured one, and it is worth being honest that this is where the café’s personality lives. A cinnamon-heavy Barcelona latte is the drink regulars name first; matcha is treated as a real category rather than a grudging concession, and seasonal builds — a rose cappuccino, a strawberry matcha — rotate with the weather. Cold brew covers the summer. If you drink your coffee black and want a rotating single-origin filter with a conversation about processing, this is not the room for it, and the counter will not pretend it is.

What that adds up to is a café where the drink is reliably good and the reason to come is everything around it. That is a legitimate position, and it is held consistently: the flavoured lattes are not sugar bombs, the milk is textured properly, and the beans behind them are ones any specialty drinker in the city would recognize.

Who’s behind it

The café was opened in February 2019 by Steve Lipari and Vanessa Sansonetti, two business partners rather than career baristas, and the difference shows in what they built. The garden and the rooftop were not part of the original room — they were added on afterwards, which is why the layout feels discovered rather than planned, and why the maple at the centre of the yard now dominates a space it once merely decorated.

Their timing was brutal. A café that opens in February 2019 gets one year of normal trading before the shutdowns, and a business whose main asset is seating capacity is exactly the kind that did not survive them. This one did, partly because the outdoor space turned from a nice extra into the only thing that was legally usable, and partly because a neighbourhood that had lost a lot of its independents kept showing up.

What it’s for

This is a café with three different answers depending on which room you sit in, and knowing that in advance is most of the value. The back lounge is where the laptops go: there is Wi-Fi, there are tables you can actually spread out on, and nobody comes to move you along after an hour. On a weekday morning it functions as a perfectly serviceable working room, quieter than the front and away from the door.

The garden is the opposite — it is for conversation, and it is very hard to work in. People bring dates here, they bring the friend they have not seen since spring, and they bring their dog. Screens come out for photographs and then go away. The rooftop is the evening version of the same idea, and because the café stays open past the point where most coffee bars have stacked their chairs, it doubles as an after-dinner destination, which is genuinely unusual for the genre.

The honest caveat is capacity. At peak — sunny weekends, warm evenings — there is a queue at the door and no guarantee of a table anywhere in the building, and the fact that seating is spread across four separate areas means finding a free one is a hunt rather than a glance. Takeaway works well and the counter moves quickly, so if the weather has brought the whole neighbourhood out, treating it as a walk-up is the sane plan.

The space

The building unfolds in layers. The front is small and dark, with a handful of tables and a counter, and it is genuinely misleading — a lot of people look in, decide it is full, and walk on. Behind it is a larger back room with the piano and the long communal table, then a stone walkway out to the ground-floor garden, then stairs to the roof. Each area has its own volume: the front is busy and transactional, the back room hums, the garden is the quietest place in the building, and the rooftop is somewhere between the two.

The decorating instinct is maximalist and second-hand rather than minimal and new. Candelabras, birdcage lamps, mirrors with old frames, concert posters, candles, books and plants everywhere, plus a bust of Frida Kahlo watching over the roof. It photographs extremely well, which is both the reason the room is always full and the reason it is occasionally hard to have a quiet coffee in it. Dogs are welcome throughout the outdoor areas.

Two practical weaknesses are worth stating. The layout involves steps and narrow passages, and the rooftop is reached by a staircase, so the upper level is not available to everyone. And the garden and roof are weather-dependent in a city with real winters — for several months of the year the café is only the indoor rooms, which are a fraction of the advertised space.

Beyond coffee

The kitchen question here has a clean answer: there isn’t one, in the baking sense. Nothing is made on the premises. The counter is stocked from outside suppliers, and the café names them rather than hiding behind a generic pastry case — Kate’s Town Talk Bakery for the everyday baking, St-Viateur bagels brought in from Montreal, vegan items from Tori’s Bake Shop, cold-pressed juice from Village Juicery. Butter and pecan tarts are the things people come back for.

There is also a light savoury offer — brunch-style toasts and a waffle among them — which means you can eat properly rather than just sweetly, but this is a coffee bar with food rather than a brunch kitchen. If a full cooked breakfast is the point of the outing, this is not the address; if you want something good alongside a long conversation in the garden, it does that job well.

When to come

The doors open before the working day starts, which makes the weekday morning slot the best-kept part of the café: the back room is calm, the garden is empty and cool, and the counter has time for you. From late morning onward the room fills, and by weekend afternoon it is at capacity with a queue outside.

Seasonally, the calculus is simple. From late spring to early autumn the outdoor areas are the reason to come and the café roughly triples in usable size. The rooftop heaters stretch that into the shoulder months, but not into deep winter. In the cold half of the year you are choosing this place for the piano room and the clutter, not for the garden, and it is a smaller, cosier and much more crowded experience. Because it trades into the evening, it also works after dinner, when most of the specialty bars in the area have long closed.

Getting there

The café sits on the Queen West strip in the west end, a short walk from Trinity Bellwoods park and in the middle of the busiest independent retail run in the city. The simplest transit approach is Bathurst Station on the Bloor–Danforth line, then south to the Queen corridor; Osgoode Station works from the east if you do not mind a longer walk through the gallery district. The streetcar along Queen passes the door, and the whole area is comfortably walkable from anywhere between Trinity Bellwoods and the Entertainment District.

There is no meaningful parking situation to speak of — this is a stretch where curbside space is a fantasy on any pleasant afternoon, and arriving on foot, by bike or by streetcar is not a preference but a practicality.

Good to know

Walk past the front room before you judge it. The single most common mistake here is standing in the doorway, seeing four occupied tables, and leaving — with a garden and a rooftop sitting empty twenty steps further in. Tables are not bookable, so the strategy at peak is to send one person to scout while the other queues.

Bring a layer if you are aiming for the roof outside high summer; the heaters help but the terrace is genuinely open to the sky, and it shuts when the weather turns. The café is dog-friendly outdoors, which is a plus for some visitors and worth knowing about in advance for others. And be aware that the room is a well-known photography spot: on a bright weekend there will be people composing shots, which is charming or irritating depending on your mood.

Questions and answers

Is Cafe23 good for working on a laptop?

Yes, in the back room and on a weekday. There is Wi-Fi, there are usable tables, and staff do not move people along. The garden and the rooftop are much less suited to it, and at weekends the whole building is too busy to count on a seat.

Does the café roast its own coffee?

No. It buys from two Toronto roasteries, Hale Coffee and De Mello. The house style follows from that — espresso built for milk drinks, consistent rather than experimental.

Is the rooftop patio open all year?

No. The ground-floor garden and the rooftop terrace are seasonal and weather-dependent. Standing heaters extend the rooftop into the cooler shoulder months, but in winter the café is effectively its indoor rooms only.

Can I bring a dog?

Dogs are welcome in the outdoor areas, and on warm weekends the garden is full of them.

Is anything baked on site?

No. Everything in the pastry case comes from outside bakeries, which the café names — including Montreal-style bagels and a dedicated vegan supplier. Butter and pecan tarts are the signature items.

Can I book a table?

No, seating is walk-in only. At peak times expect a short queue at the door and a hunt for a free table across four separate seating areas.

What should a first-time visitor order?

The cinnamon-forward Barcelona latte is the drink the regulars name, and the matcha is taken seriously here. If you want the coffee straight, a flat white shows the roasters’ work most clearly.

Is the whole café step-free?

No. The layout runs through narrow passages and the rooftop is reached by a staircase, so the upper terrace in particular is not accessible to everyone.

Opening hours