the coffee. ザ•コーヒー — Restaurant in Toronto

Do you eat croissants to enjoy? Well if you do, don't go here and walk a block north to a local cafe called Woolshed. Woolshed has the best croissants in town by Breadhead. The croissant at The Coffee was stale, soft and not flaky, very generic flavour, and from I could tell was probably from Costco. (Sorry if it's actually baked by a local baker, and if it is...Baker....you need to learn how to make a croissant) I also blame The Coffee for this shoddy croissant. I saw the server got it from storage under the counter in a sardine packed Tupperware container packed full of them, probably baked from 5 days ago. I walked home with that sad croissant and put it in the airfryer...at least it made some flakiness. Enough of the croissant experience. The drip coffee was ok, a bit burnt, but it was decent enough. It's in comparison to a Mild/medium roast Starbucks coffee. But for the price it's not worth it since the cup made me feel like I was a giant holding a cup of coffee. There is a Starbucks 3 blocks west if that is what you wanted. Walk a block north to Woolshed for excellent coffee, or walk 2 blocks east to Wallace where the coffee is amazing as well. Both are local joints for a better tasting coffee by orders of magnitude. For atmosphere(and this is totally subjective) is sterile and clean. It's open with minimalist hard furniture and counters. Sharp corners everywhere so if you easily get cut, be careful here. If it had a lot of people in there I could imagine it being difficult to have a conversation because it must get very echo-ee. There isn't any real character, unless being sterile is a character trait, but from what I see on sitcoms, nobody wants to be sterile. I'd call it what a robot would design for a person. Take this as you would from someone judging a piece of art. Maybe this is what the current generation likes, what do I know? You order by a touch screen when the barista is right there behind the counter as well. I'm almost 50 so the world confuses...

This place is wonderful, except for one thing - the ordering process.

Atmosphere is beautiful, simple, natural. Very calming. Quality is excellent.

But when you go to order, it's fine if what you want can be found in the long menu (though I personally prefer not having to touch screens in a food environment).

However, if what you'd like happens to be slightly different, you can't customize it without basically asking the barista to do it under the table - at least that's how it feels, since they tell you it's not on the menu..... with a long awkward pause..... "but we'll make an exception".

Before I seem crazy unreasonable, I'm not talking a fancy request here.

They have hot vanilla matcha available, but can you get it iced? No. It's not on the menu in the Iced section, and there's no option to select Iced in the hot section.

They will suggest you get the iced matcha without vanilla which is on the menu instead, or one of the Signature iced matcha drinks. If they have hot vanilla matcha, why is an iced version of the same thing not on the menu? The barista basically has to find something close to key in, and add vanilla instead, but why are they put in that position?

I don't know of any other cafe that 1. doesn't have both hot and iced of the same drinks available, and 2. doesn't have an option to add a syrup (for a price) if they have them.

They are very kind baristas, don't get me wrong. The 2 times I encountered this with different baristas each time, they seemed embarrassed they couldn't accommodate the request easily because of the silly ordering module, but ended up doing it after the manager stepped in to 'approve' it. It made me feel bad for asking and putting them in that position, but I didn't want a hot drink, and I prefer my matchas sweet and cold.. it was either that or I would've gone somewhere else. It just sucked that the ordering process made everyone feel uncomfortable...

I’m Japanese, born and raised in Japan, and this was my first time coming across this Japanese-inspired Brazilian coffee shop. It honestly made me happy first to see elements of my culture represented abroad. That said, I was a bit disappointed with little care to our language. I couldn’t help but notice a number of details that felt off—especially when it comes to the use of Japanese language throughout the store.

One major example is the store’s logo on the wall. It seems like it’s meant to say “The Coffee” in Japanese katakana, but instead it’s written as 「サ・コーヒ」, which is completely incorrect, and reads more like “Sa Cooff” in English pronunciation🫥

For a brand that draws inspiration from Japan, the use of incorrect or awkward Japanese feels a bit careless. It gives the impression that the details were added for aesthetic purposes without proper cultural understanding or quality control. This is especially evident when a key element like the store name isn’t spelled properly—it suggests that the signage may have been approved without input from any native Japanese speakers.

Another example is the label on the bottled water, which says 「ガス抜きのミネラルウォーター」. This translates literally to “degassed mineral water,” which sounds unnatural and awkward in both Japanese and English😅 It’s something that instantly stands out to native speakers as a mistranslation.

Even the Japanese text printed on the tote bags feels like it was generated by low quality machine translation, resulting in strange and unnatural expressions.

If this brand genuinely wants to celebrate Japanese culture, I hope they’ll consider making some fundamental improvements—starting with having native Japanese speakers review the language used in their branding. Respectfully, if Japanese is going to be a central part of the brand identity, it deserves to be handled with the same care and attention as any other...