Review #3 - the elysian room

the elysian room
1778 west 5th ave
Vancouver , BC
V6J 1P2
www.elysianroom.com
mon-fri 7am-10:30pm
sat-sun noon-10:30pm



Atmosphere
Amazing. Very peaceful and soothing. It is a small cafe which I like therefore the noise level would never exceed your patience. They played soft but enjoyable music. Derek thinks it would provide a great study or reading atmosphere. A good local feel. The set up is nice as the counter is there right when you walk in the door so that those people who are getting coffee to go will not disturb others who are sitting in the shop. I thought that was great.

Wi-fi and Plugins
I believe they had free wireless as there was someone in there with a computer, but we did not bring a computer of our own to prove this. sorry.

Espresso Drinks and Coffee
Derek and I both had straight up coffee. It was absolutely incredible. Each cup of coffee is made to order and is individually brewed in the Clover, an automatic french press machine. The price for a cup of coffee ranges from $2-$3.25, but it is well worth it. They serve Intelligentsia coffee but are currently trying out Novo coffee and are most likely going to make the switch to this new Denver based company. We had the Novo coffee (it was called Hache from Ethiopia, with one smell of the beans, we had to get it). They had a Synesso espresso machine and the espresso drinks were average in price. I appreciated how much they cared about coffee at this place.

Food
We went in the later evening (as they are open until 10:30pm) so I had a chocolate pistachio biscotti and Derek had an apple cranberry cookie. They were both very tasty. They had a few other pastries and treats as well as some wraps for lunch or dinner. They were average in price.

Service
Great. The guy who helped us recommended to the Hache coffee and had us smell it beforehand and was very excited to serve it to us. When the other barista brought us our fresh coffee she said "the flavour of the coffee gets better as it cools a little bit, so I would recommend doing that". To me that shows passion just in the fact that she wanted to let us know that. They were also kind enough to clear our dishes for us. They seemed very well trained on the espresso machine and had great customer service. A+ in my book.

Bottom Line
I can't rave about this place enough. We thoroughly enjoyed every minute of being there and were really soaking it up. We wish we lived in the neighborhood and that this was our local coffee shop. The shop is a bit small which can be an issue with overcrowding if it got to that point, but that is a personal preference. Also they do not open until noon on the weekends which I don't like and if I lived in that neighborhood I would be disappointed to not be able to roll out of bed on Saturday morning and get coffee from there. But I hope you all enjoy it as much as I did.