Red Brick Cafe

A single storefront on Douglas Street does the work of four downtown rooms at once. Through the morning it pours espresso and pulls shots; through lunch it plates breakfast sandwiches, wraps and soup; along its brick walls it hangs rotating art; and after hours it clears tables for live music and private bookings. Red Brick Cafe runs out of a heritage building at the edge of downtown Guelph, and that breadth is the whole idea — a guest can stop in for a flat white and a quiet corner to work, settle a meeting over grilled cheese, and leave having noticed a new show on the walls. The cafe is built to be used more than one way in a single day.

The coffee has names behind it. The espresso is Speed River, the drip rotates fair trade and organic blends including Blue Dog medium roast and a darker Douglas St. roast, and the cold brew steeps a full eighteen hours before it pours on nitrogen. The everyday board is all there too: cappuccino, flat white, the Canadiano, a sixteen-ounce iced coffee pulled stronger from Blue Dog and cooled for the season. The tea lattes are built rather than poured from a bottle — a matcha ground from premium organic Gyokuro, a house chai lightly sweetened with cinnamon, an Earl Grey London Fog laced with vanilla. Food holds up its end. The breakfast sandwich stacks egg, cheddar and Black Forest ham on a locally made bagel; the breakfast burrito folds black bean salsa, peppers and spinach around an omelette and arrives with guacamole; the pesto cheddar grilled cheese presses pesto and two cheeses into multigrain. The Hungarian mushroom soup comes vegan and gluten-free, served with a scone or gluten-free toast.

That soup is a tell. Nearly everything on the baking shelf carries a version for someone with a restriction: vegan blueberry lemon scones, vegan date squares set on an oat base with vanilla and cinnamon, a vegan morning glory muffin, a gluten-free banana chocolate loaf, cookies made dairy-free. Every soup is built vegan and gluten-free as a matter of course, the milks come in non-dairy options, and gluten-free toast stands in wherever bread would. None of it is a short side list bolted on for appearances — the vegan and gluten-free options run right through the menu, from the baking shelf to the soup pot.

Red Brick opened in 2006, when founder Bella Krieger took on the heritage building on Douglas Street and made it a cafe; her name is spelled a few different ways across local accounts, but the founding story is consistent. The brick and the original detailing did more than set a mood. They gave the cafe a second life as a gallery, and the walls have carried more than a hundred art shows since the doors opened. The day-to-day now runs on a general manager, an events manager, a kitchen supervisor and a gallery curator — a curator being a role most coffee shops never think to staff.

The arts side is current, not nostalgia. Red Brick books live music, private parties and gatherings through its own calendar, and runs a coffee-and-tea prearrangement service with treat trays for groups that would rather hand off a small event than wrangle a long table. Through an ordinary week the same tables turn over from laptops and study sessions in the morning to meetings and a slow afternoon coffee. Add the retail beans by the bag and the next show already going up on the brick, and a downtown coffee stop turns into something nearer a neighbourhood arts room that also happens to pour a very good flat white.