coffee and tea Archives - Curiously Carmen

Trafiq Bakery

January 15, 2020 Leave a Comment

I am slowly catching up on reviews from the holidays! I’ve been eyeing Trafiq for awhile because I’ve heard great things about their cakes.

Since my birthday was coming up, I wanted to try a cake from Trafiq and fell in love with the Pretty in Pink cake from the website.

While trying to order the cake online a few days prior to my birthday, the website kept saying out of stock and they don’t answer their phones.

I figured I might as well check out this place for lunch and have a slice of the cake before placing the order! Cola accompanied me for lunch, and I enjoyed it so much here that I came back a week later for lunch!

Trafiq is always bustling, busy, and loud. You place your order at the till, which can be a bit of a wait because of how busy it is. I found their ordering system not very efficient. They could benefit from having two cash registers because there is always a line.

Seating is also not very comfortable, with the tables a few inches from each other. If you’re looking for a quiet place, this is not the cafe to go to. Tables are usually occupied but turnover is quick, just keep an eye out and have one person sit at the table while the other places the order.

DIY sandwich: I ordered a custom sandwich. At the beginning of the line up, there is a piece of paper where you circle the choice of bread, meat, sauce, cheese, and toppings. I chose focaccia bread, chicken breast, pesto, guacamole (at no extra cost!), Swiss cheese, sprouts, and arugula.

The sandwich was delicious! Thick focaccia bread slices, flavourful grilled chicken breast, and fresh veggies inside. I have no complaints about the sandwich.

DIY croissant sandwich: Cola ordered a custom sandwich as well. I don’t remember what exactly she got, but she also enjoyed her sandwich a lot.

Pretty in pink slice: The Pretty in Pink cake is their version of a strawberries and cream cake. This was sooo good. It came with layers of vanilla cake with airy strawberry mouse. Vanilla sour cream was also added, which sounds a bit weird but went well with the vanilla cake and strawberry mousse.

The cake was light with the perfect amount of sweetness. The cake was finished in a pink, white chocolate glaze which gave it the cute pink colour!

Needless to say, I placed my cake order that day. I added my own touch to it with some star candles from Michael’s, and LINE Friends characters, Brown and Cony.

DIY sandwich: I came back the following week for lunch, where it was equally as chaotic. I ordered a similar sandwich to my first visit, except I switched the bread from foccacia bread to cranberry pecan bread.

The sandwich was equally as tasty this time. The cranberry pecan bread was delicious too!

All in all, Trafiq is a delicious choice for cakes and sandwiches. The only negative is how chaotic and busy it is in there all the time! They are also too busy to answer their phones so don’t even bother trying to call to place a cake order like I did.

Grounds for Coffee

January 7, 2020 Leave a Comment

After a satisfying dinner at Jamjar Canteen, Brie and I walked along Commercial to digest and chat more. We came across Grounds for Coffee and decided to head in for some tea and dessert.

They are right beside my current favourite ice cream shop, Elephant Garden Creamery! I haven’t noticed them before because I make a bee line immediately to Elephant Garden, whoops!

Anyways, Grounds for Coffee is a fairly new cafe, and is the second location. The original location is located by UBC. The cafe was spacious and warm, with wooden hues. It would be a good place to study or to catch up with a friend.

Since we came about a hour before closing, their pastry shelf was on the emptier side.

Rooibos tea: We both ordered a rooibos tea that night. The rooibos tea was warm and comforting. There was a hint of vanilla to it as well.

Chocolate chip cookie: We also decided to split a chocolate chip cookie! The cookie was delicious and tasted homemade. There was a lot of chocolate chunks inside too!

Grounds for Coffee would be a good place to get some work done or meet with a friend. Compared to other coffee shops in Vancouver, Grounds for Coffee wasn’t as crowded (could also be that we came later in the night) so I appreciated that too!

Mr. Mustache Tea and Dessert

December 19, 2019 Leave a Comment

Mr. Mustache is a cafe across from Metrotown. The cafe used to be Cafe Joie, which I wrote a review on three years ago. I didn’t realize that they closed down and got replaced with Mr. Mustache! After a quick Google search, it looks like they opened in early 2018.

There is also a Mr. Mustache location in the Marpole/South Granville area.

I didn’t actually visit the cafe, as these pastries were brought as leftovers from a work event. They seem to be continuing the trend of cute, Instagram worthy food and drinks though!

I sampled three of their pastries. The pickiness in me is wishing that I rotated the pink cake so that the Mr. Mustache card is showing!

Matcha cake: Starting with the matcha cake, I found this to be delicious. The matcha was earthy but not overpoweringly strong. I would describe this cake to have a light, airy, mousse texture. If you’re a matcha fan, I would definitely recommend this delightful slice of cake.

I quite enjoyed this and wish I could have had more than a few bites! But I am very sensitive to caffeine and did not want to risk not being able to sleep, especially since the next slice of cake also contained tea.

Peach oolong tea cake: I assumed that this would be a strawberry cake. To my surprise after looking up the menu online, it was actually a peach oolong tea cake ! Not many of these out there, so I was quite curious as to how it tasted.

The peach oolong tea cake was delightful and delicious as well! The peach flavour gave it some sweetness and went really well with the oolong tea. It was a very fragrant cake.

It tasted exactly like a peach tea, which was interesting to me! I really like Teavana’s peach tranquility tea so this slice reminded me of that. There was also some hidden real peach slides inside the cake.

Cheesecake: Last but not least, the bumblebee cheesecake! The cheesecake was made Asian style, meaning that it was also light and airy… but not as light as Uncle Tetsu’s. This was very enjoyable to eat as well!

A thin layer of jelly glaze on top allowed for the cute bumblebee design! I thought it would be mango or passionfruit, but it was just a plain, sweet glaze.

I’m not sure if this is because I had the cake a day after, but the glaze did not stay on the cheesecake. The whole layer of jelly glaze peeled off when I tried to get a bite the cake. It wasn’t a big deal because it was still delicious, but it made it a tad bit messier to consume.

All in all, trying these three pastries made me want to visit the actual store. You could taste the quality in the cakes and they have a cute factor as well!

An interesting thing to note about Mr. Mustache is that they are open until 12am. They probably get a lot of students cramming for exams here. Well, if you’re craving desserts at 11pm, you know where to go!

Whitby’s Coffee House

August 25, 2019 Leave a Comment

Whitby’s Coffee House is one of the many cafes along the main street by White Rock pier. After having lunch at The Boathouse a couple of blocks away, I was feeling like some dessert.

My parents and the fiance wanted dessert initially too, until they finished their lunches at The Boathouse and decided they were all too full.

I didn’t really have a preference to which cafe/gelato place, so we randomly walked into this one on the way back to the car. There are seriously so many places to pick from within the few blocks!

Passion fruit and mango sorbet: I’m actually not that big of a sorbet fan because it’s not rich or creamy enough for me. But since I can’t have ice cream and most gelato places currently do not offer coconut milk based dessert, I had to settle with sorbet.

I was pleasantly surprised at how delicious this was for a sorbet. I’m a big fan of anything passion fruit or mango based so this was right up my alley. There was more passion fruit flavour than mango here.

In the past, I’ve had sorbets which contained ice chunks because they weren’t blended properly. This was not the case at Whitby’s, the sorbet was smooth and blended well.

There are so many choices for dessert in White Rock that it is a bit overwhelming. I’m glad I stumbled into Whitby’s though, and would love to get the sorbet again if I ever came back to White Rock!

Chunyang Tea

June 27, 2019 Leave a Comment

Chunyang Tea has been on my list to try ever since I saw it on social media in April. It caught my eye because it is one of the few bubble tea places that offered soy milk!

Ever since the brown sugar/dirty milk latte trend started, I haven’t been able to have this drink because it’s typically made with milk! But now I have this place and Ding Tea, which offers almond milk at an extra cost.

Chunyang Tea is quite small and cramped. I’m not even sure if there’s a customer washroom in there. They have a some seats but I would recommend getting your drink to go.

Brown sugar pearl with soy milk: I was very impressed with my drink. You could definitely taste the quality in it. The soy milk was velvety smooth, and went very well with the brown sugar pearls.

Be sure to stir the drink so that the sweetness balances out, as the soy milk didn’t taste sweetened.

Chunyang fresh black milk tea: The boyfriend went with their black milk tea. The black tea was fragrant and very strong. I already had a feeling it would be very fragrant because the first thing I smelled walking in here was tea.

I’m very glad that we came to Chunyang. This visit definitely won’t be our last! The prices are a bit more expensive, but you can really taste the quality in their drinks!