How two best friends joined forces to open Toronto's hottest new cafe
One of the hottest cafes that opened in Toronto this summer just so happens to be incredibly easy to miss, but you’d be remiss to pass it by.
When Erika Mauro and Madison Elliott — Toronto friends, bartenders, and founders of award-winning mobile cocktail company Sips — found themselves in surplus of one non-motorized trailer, initially intended to be used for the cocktail company, they knew they couldn’t just let it sit collecting dust.
“We wanted to get into the brand activation part of it, which we have done, where brands would rent it out and so on, so forth. But being in Toronto, because space is so limited, it’s a hard sell, so it was just irritating me, because we had it parked, and I always have to worry about it, like, somebody stole our generator off it,” Mauro told Dished Toronto.
“So once that happened, I was like, ‘I need to deal with this trailer.'”
Cafe Sips co-founder Erika Mauro stirs up a seasonal special. (Fareen Karim/blogTO)
Having friends in high places helps from time to time, so she and Elliott called up their friends at King West sneaker customization studio Mack House about putting the trailer in the shop’s expansive parking lot.
It was an immediate yes, and Cafe Sips, their friendly cafe and dirty soda shop run out of the trailer, was born.
Mauro told Dished Toronto that the concept for Cafe Sips actually originated with the desire to bring the Utah-based dirty soda trend to Toronto.
“Three years ago, me and Maddie went on a road trip across the U.S… and Maddie is obsessed with Mormon culture, and obviously, Mormon culture is dirty sodas, so we were like, ‘How does Toronto not have this?'” Mauro said.
They don’t just do the standard sodas-and-syrups, though. Instead, they’ve reinterpreted the cocktails they serve at Sips Bar as new, zero-proof creations.
The Italian Lover ($9) is a personal favourite of Mauro’s, with San Pellegrino Limonata, lemon juice, almond syrup, and French vanilla cream. Don’t let the almond syrup scare you away if it’s not your style.
The nuanced flavour mellows out the tartness of the lemon soda and makes the whole thing taste like a sip of Amalfi sunshine.
Sun-kissed ($9) is an equally cheerful sipper. Cafe Sips’ interpretation of a creamsicle, it combines San Pellegrino Aranciata with orange juice, vanilla syrup, and French vanilla creamer.
Blending the best of a creamsicle’s tartness and sweetness, it manages to be creamy, but not cloying, refreshing even despite the dairy.
Joining the permanent non-soda offerings of assorted espresso-based beverages and matcha lattes, Cafe Sips also serves a rotating suite of featured drinks.
When we stopped by, the Feeling Loopy ($6.75) was one such feature, and Mauro told us it’s already become a best seller.
Inspired by a cocktail Mauro and Elliott concocted during their time working together at Chubby’s Jamaican Kitchen, it incorporates housemade strawberry syrup, matcha and fruit loop cold foam for a drink that’s surprisingly well-balanced.
If you like sweet drinks, this one’s for you. If you don’t, it actually might still be for you.
The Banana Matcha ($6), on the other hand, is a permanent fixture on the menu, and it’s easy to understand why.
Using a banana syrup Mauro and Elliott make by hand every few days, the drink completely avoids the artificial territory banana-flavoured beverages often get trapped in and completely sticks the landing.
It tastes like a slice of banana bread that your grandma just pulled out of the oven, with the added benefit of a caffeine boost and surroundings that are, in all likelihood, decidedly more chic than your grandma’s house. Sorry, grandmas.
As the weather turns colder, it’s easy to start wondering about what the future of Cafe Sips, an outdoor concept by design, holds.
Mauro and Elliott, though, aren’t worried about it.
“I think our niche is that we are a trailer, that we are mobile, and there’s not very many in Toronto. There are in Ontario, but there’s not necessarily many in downtown Toronto, especially ones that are non-motorized, so I do think that kind of going forward, we’ll stick with the trailer,” Elliott says.
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“Game plan is to stay here and get heaters, figure out how we can kind of work through the wintertime,” adds Mauro. “And then if it does just get too cold and it does start to snow, then we will just close and it will be seasonal in terms of, like, Okay, let’s open it back up in March.”
For now, though, they’re open Wednesday through Sunday and ready to serve you something worth venturing off the beaten path for.
By “the beaten path” we, of course, mean King West.
Cafe Sips
Address:Â 91 Walnut Ave.
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