Bolton Bean — Restaurant in Bolton

This is a hard review for me. I want to love this place, as I live less than a mile away. The staff are nice, always super friendly and accommodating. Especially the young guy that works on the weekend. The atmosphere is very nice. The food is a 3, good food - nothing extraordinary, but a bit over priced for the quality.

The coffee, however, is where my problem lays. It is truly terrible! I love coffee, I'm a coffee drinker. I can't explain my excitement when I saw a coffee spot was opening in Bolton. However the coffee here has a terrible sour flavor. I like strong bold roasts, and the coffee is strong, but the flavor is disgusting. The kind staff guy even let me try a number of things one day when I told him this (coffee, latte, americano), and every one of them had the same awful flavor! I don't get it, but I really wish they would change their coffee. I'm amazed more people aren't commenting about this. It keeps me and my family from being regulars, because I know if I come here for breakfast I am going to have to stop for coffee on the way home.

It's also very odd that a coffee shop would be closed on Sunday’s.

UPDATE: June 2021, time for a score increase here! I tried their coffee again for the first time in a while. The owner / manager guy, was once again super nice and accommodating. I explained what I was looking for, essentially an iced caramel latte with extra espresso shot, extra ice, less milk. (Yes, I’m super picky.) It was exceptional! He even melted the caramel into the espresso shot, so it blended wonderfully into the drink. A nice touch.

My kids love the fruit smoothies. And the peanut butter chocolate cookies are to die for. The food could still use some nuancing in my opinion, some items are better than others, and they forgot the bacon on my sandwich last week. Hence the 4 stars instead of 5. But we are quickly becoming regulars! Definitely worth a try for...

My husband + family used to own a small coffee roastery - we’re always looking for a sweet new spot to try! We were so excited to stumble on this spot during our recent road trip.

Pros: Amazing atmosphere! Beautiful location and tastefully done, really enjoyed the location itself. Minimal wait, easy parking. We didn’t order ahead, but loved they had that option as well. There was a wide variety of options for both breakfast and lunch, as well as a prepared pastries ready to go. Very nice outdoor spot to sit also.

Middle of the Road: We both got a meat / egg / cheese on a croissant. Yummy, didn’t wow me. Extremely comparable to a Tim Hortons sandwich. Fair prices. We spent $25 for two of us, which we thought was reasonable for two specialty coffees and breakfast. They also source more local ingredients.

Cons: The coffee. My husband ordered a café au lait, and I an iced latte. Café au lait tasted very under-roasted. My latte seemed quite bitter, improving some with a flavor shot but I didn’t want to just mask the coffee flavor with additional flavoring. All in all, we ended up taking 5-6 sips total and picked up some new coffee at the next rest stop.

Overall: 2/5. Decent spot, but highly variable depending on your coffee...

First time visiting the Bolton Bean today was a very frustrating experience, and I won't be back. We waited in line to order, only to find out they were out of our selection. No big deal, that happens. We courteously got out of line to avoid holding up the people behind us, to come up with a back up order. We wait in line, again, give her our new order only to be told they were also out of that order... and then the women up front decides to inform us of the other 5 or 6 items they were out of. No apology for not informing us the first time.

To double the frustration, the staff did have a "sold out" sign over one item on the specials board, so they definitely seem to have a simple solution available to them. None of the items we tried to order were labeled as sold out.

FWIW, it would be helpful to avoid such bad impressions to have staff either put a sign up informing customers of all the items you are out of or, to let customers know of the items they are out of before they try to pick out a different selection.

Place looks cool, food looked good, but that was lazy and super indifferent customer services that resulted in a total waste of time. 1 star because I...