Artigiano Pender — Restaurant in Vancouver

A true Vancouver institution! This place has been serving proper espresso since the mid-90s, back when most of the city thought coffee came exclusively from Tim Hortons or gas stations. I have deep personal history with this location - took my second wife Carol here on our very first date in 1998.

Should have known the relationship was doomed from that initial coffee meeting. Carol ordered a "skinny vanilla latte with oat milk" (this was 1998 - oat milk wasn't even invented yet), then spent twenty minutes explaining her elaborate dietary restrictions to our increasingly confused barista. I ordered a simple americano and watched her interrogate the poor kid about fair trade certification and roasting temperatures.

The conversation went downhill from there. Carol criticized my choice to add sugar ("refined sugar is basically poison"), questioned why I read the sports section first instead of international news, and actually pulled out a small notebook to jot down "compatibility concerns." On a first date! At a coffee shop!

Despite that red flag parade, I somehow married her eight months later. The divorce papers were signed in 2003, coincidentally just two blocks away at my lawyer's office on Robson. Carol cited "fundamental lifestyle incompatibilities" and "Gary's concerning obsession with hockey statistics." She wasn't wrong about the statistics part.

Twenty-six years later, Cafe Artigiano is still here serving excellent coffee while Carol has presumably moved on to torment some other poor soul with her dietary requirements. The baristas still know how to pull a proper shot, the atmosphere remains consistently cozy, and they've never once judged me for reading hockey stats on my phone.

The irony isn't lost on me that this coffee shop has been more consistent and reliable than any of my marriages. Sometimes the best relationships are with places that just serve you good coffee without asking too many questions.

Five stars for outlasting my second marriage and maintaining excellent espresso...

Horrible service and staff. Staff are super unprofessional, unfriendly and even rude. When I ordered my coffee, the girl at the cashier showed me the coffee machine and said it would take around 4 minutes for my coffee to be prepared (Apparently they were resetting the coffee machine, or brewing fresh coffee maybe). After 10 minutes my coffee was not ready yet, and the girl seemed to have completely forgotten about my coffee, as she was just chilling with her colleague, in the back (there were no other customers ordering, before or after me.)

After more than 10 minutes I asked if my coffee was ready. The cashier went to the coffee machine, shook it VERY hard few times, trying to get some brewed coffee out of it!! The machine seemed to be somehow not working..! Eventually she poured me some coffee from a container, which I am not sure how fresh it was really.

There were no cups for drinking water, and by around 4pm, they totally removed the drinking water container!!

The place closes at 6 pm yet the staff started winding down the place around 4:45pm ; clearly annoying the existing customers in a passive-aggressive manner, trying to force them to leave the place ASAP. They even left the coffeeshop door fully open since around 5pm - while it was really cold outside. And at 5:50 they had completely shut down the place and all set to leave, and TURNED OFF the lights in the whole coffeeshop! They literally kicked me out of the place around 5:50pm, while they were officially supposed to close at 6pm!

My visit was on March 14, 2024 in the afternoon, and I won't go back...

I used to come here often; almost everyday, in fact. But I did notice that the service and coffee making standards started slipping. Still, I kept going back because the only alternative in the immediate area was Starbucks and Waves, which are really gross.

Then came more changes in the menu, the renos, and more turn over of staff. It seemed that there was a change in management, and the staff were no longer as friendly and nice, and the baristas seemed to no longer care about the quality of the coffee they were making. I have actually had to start asking them to re-do my coffee because of the poor extraction. This didn't used to be a problem in the rare instance I've asked for a re-do in the past because once upon a time they cared about the quality of the coffee they were dishing out. But not anymore, it seemed. Every time I asked to have them re-do the coffee (which was more often than I wanted), I got attitude.

I had enough, so I voted with my wallet and started going to their competitor up the road (as soon as it opened in the fall of 2017), and have been going there almost everyday ever since because every cup I get is made perfectly and handed to me with a smile.

Recently, I had a friend who wanted to go to meet up here, so I went hoping that maybe things have changed for the better. They haven't. So I...