I needed to wake up, or else needed stimulants in general. After walking up Roncesvalles with the Cheery Milliner, fatigue was leeching into my limbs. We ended up in Coffee & All That Jazz, a wide strip of a cafe just west of Roncesvalles before it runs north into Dundas West.
Not the first time I’ve been in, and my initial reaction was much more charitable. On this visit, the music was simmering low behind the ambient chatter, and their coffee was nondescript. I’ve been noticing drip coffee wandering toward the precipitous bland spread of mediocrity since the proliferation of espresso, though I’m not entirely sold on that being a bad thing. The Milliner’s iced tea was pleasant, a Moroccan mint steeped fresh and poured over ice, but nothing extravagant. The one item of note was the Dufflet key lime tart with a chocolate shell. I found the crust a bit too crumbly, but citrussy swirl of filling was a balanced sweet and sour, fluffy and light as a mousse without weighing heavy as most cream pie fillings do, so much good it does them.
The sun outside was exploiting one of the last bright afternoons of the season, and had been beaming down with unforgiving heat as the days counted down to October’s end; the cold tea and tart mousse were welcome relief, as was a chance to rest the straining plastic bags of food stuffs and garage sale goodies we’d acquired on our walk north. Not a bad pit stop if you happen to be in the area, but nothing to seek out as an outing.
Coffee & All That Jazz
403 Roncesvalles Ave, Toronto, ON M6R 2N1