Revolver

Revolver

Arguably the most famous coffee shop in Vancouver, Revolver is a stylishly designed, urban chic, very ‘gastown’ looking establishment, putting out some of the best coffee in the city. Their bean selection is extensive, you can chose a dozen different ways to have your coffee brewed and in my experience the staff are friendly and infinitely knowledgeable about the beans we all know and love.

Coffee

6oz Cortado – aprox $4 depending on bean
What I love about Revolver is that they often have various espresso beans to chose from. The menu at the counter is your guide to their flavour profiles, so you pick the one you want and the world class baristas get to work expertly steaming the milk. My latte was made with a Phil and Sebastian Nicaragua bean, giving it a rich flavour with delicious caramel notes. The milk was perfectly steamed, adding a great sweetness to the already sweet espresso shot.

Revolver

Pour Over – aprox $4 depending on bean
On a separate trip to Revolver I had a pour over coffee, with beans from Honduras, roasted by Ritual Coffee Roasters in San Francisco. I struggled to pick out the flavours they mentioned in the menu but picked out some awesome vanilla notes and a great smell of chocolate as it cooled down. I walked out of Archive (which is their expansion venue next door) totally wired, so the caffeine content must have been high!

There’s a couple of menu items I really enjoy in Revolver: One coffee done three ways or three coffees done one way. One coffee can be served in either Aeropress, pourover or french press style, or you can have three different coffee beans served via one of those methods. It’s a really interesting way of offering coffee, however at $12 it’s on the higher end of the scale.

Food

Coffee Cake – $5
Definitely the best coffee cake I’ve tried in Vancouver. Soft, moist, with heaps of raspberries, it is always a pleasure to wrap my taste buds around this baked masterpiece. In addition to this cake there are various muffins, cookies and pastries, all of which are high quality.

Sadly there are no lunch items in Revolver, so my advice is to pop across the road to Meat and Bread to have one of the best Porcetta sandwiches you’ll ever have.

Location

Located in Gastown, off the beaten track somewhat, it’s easily accessible by bus and the Skytrain is a short walk away. There’s a parkade very close by that has dozens of car sharing (Car2go, Evo etc) spots in it.

Venue

Very stylish, very trendy and always clean and tidy. Revolver has a very typical Gastown look to it – white, wood, brick with a little rough around the edges feel to it all. There’s a great mural on the wall made of masonry nails that always impresses anyone new that accompanies me.

Revolver

They also have a new venue/room next door called Archive, which is a great solution to their limited seating of the original venue. Archive has a great selection of coffee related books to read (I recommend Drift) as well as a great selection of equipment to buy so you can brew at home. Best of all there’s a communal table that encourages strangers to talk. If you’ve read any of my reviews you may have noticed that I’m a big fan of these.

Bathrooms

There’s only a single bathroom stall in Revolver (shared with Archive), which is a shame because the place is always packed full of people. As such there’s sometimes a bit of a wait. The bathroom itself is nicely designed but can sometimes get a little messy. There appears to be a magnet in one of the counters that I will always bang my elbow on, but I think that’s more my issue than theirs!

Staff

I always find the staff at Revolver welcoming, friendly and very, very knowledgeable about coffee. I recommend telling them the kind of coffee or flavours you enjoy and then going with what they suggest. There are always plenty of baristas there too, which means you get your coffee pretty quickly (unless you’re ordering one coffee three ways in which case settle in for a wait, you dug your own grave there!).

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Revolver Menu, Reviews, Photos, Location and Info - Zomato