Phil & Sebastian Coffee Roasters (Simmons Building)

Coffee in the Mattress Factory

3.5 of 5

The Simmons Building used to make mattresses. That is the kind of joke a city plays on itself: the factory built to help you sleep is now where Calgary goes to wake up. Phil & Sebastian, the company Phil Robertson and Sebastian Sztabzyb built, moved in on June 22, 2015, as one of three tenants in a 400-seat room on the edge of East Village, beside the Bow River. They brought a refurbished Probat G-45 roaster and set it up in the open, along with a training center and an R&D lab, so the work was on display instead of hidden in an industrial park.

Of their cafés around town, this is the one I would send a visitor to first. The restoration kept the bones of the old factory, the patio looks over the river, and the building opened alongside Sidewalk Citizen's bakery and Charbar from the Charcut crew, so good coffee sits close to good bread and, later in the day, a proper drink. The baristas know their brewing methods and will talk you through them without a lecture. Ask what is on the rotation and let them choose. People who know their craft like being trusted, and they reward it.

Travel enough for work and you learn to judge a city by its first cup of the day, usually swallowed in an airport or a hotel lobby. Calgary deserves better than that, and so do you. Come on a weekday morning before the room fills, take your espresso to the patio, then walk it off along the river. A mattress factory has rarely done so much for anybody's mornings.

Order this: Espresso, A pour-over from the rotating single origins, Cappuccino
The damage: $
Go: A weekday morning, then a walk along the Bow River
Find it: 618 Confluence Way SE, Calgary, AB T2G 0G1