Dana Sullivan

First visit to this Trees location, but I’ve been to many of the other locations. The space is clean and comfortable - it’s moderately-sized for downtown and wasn’t crowded around noon on a weekday while I was there. The barista was friendly. I had a veggie breakfast wrap, a slice of strawberry cheesecake (January special), and a cup of Chinese sencha. The breakfast wrap is your standard scrambled eggs wrap with a Southwest touch of black beans and peppers, with a side of spicy salsa. It was good. The strawberry cheesecake had a strong natural strawberry flavour. The texture was nice and light, this one was a bit more mousse-like than most of their cheesecakes. They use high quality tea leaves. My good impression here is consistent with the experiences I’ve had at other locations. Their food is standard cafe fare but notable for being fresh and filling. The cheesecake slices are a good size, not too dense, and all of the flavours I’ve tried so far (which is most of them) are memorable.

One of my favourite coffee shops downtown! It's such a cute and cozy little place. The most notable thing here is the unique drinks, but all the food is really good as well. The tuna and veggie paninis are quality (the veg panini can be made vegan by replacing cheese and mayo with hummus, both versions are good). The paninis come with a little side salad of mixed greens - nothing special, but it rounds out the meal. I haven't tried much from the baked good selection but they have this top-tier strawberry pistachio croissant with a baked crunchy pistachio top layer and pistachio cream and strawberry filling that has to be one of best-conceived baked goods I've had the privilege of enjoying, and I'm not even much of a croissant person.
For drinks, they have the usual selection of coffee/tea and also specialty lattes like Okinawa tea latte, ube latte, strawberry matcha, hojicha, black sesame cream latte... some of these are seasonal, some are fixtures. The flavours are wonderful and as a bonus they're pretty too. I appreciate the staff always checking to see if I want my drink sweetened and listening to my customization requests!
Finally the baristas are always smiling and are so nice! As mentioned above, they pay attention to the details when taking my order. They bring your food and drinks to your table when dining in. It's rare to find such consistently pleasant service.

Very positive experience. The barista that took my order was so friendly and made sure to put me at a table where there would be room to store the big instrument I was carrying. They were pretty busy but the assigned seating system took the stress out of finding and choosing a place to sit. Nicely designed place, both in terms of aesthetic and the layout, which fits in lots of seating but isn’t cramped.
I got the Nordic salmon toast, a walnut chocolate chip cookie, and a rooibos tea. All great! Fresh toppings and tasty dill cream cheese on the toast. The cookie was really really good, soft, buttery, chewy, packed with big chunks of chocolate. The tea, although it was just a regular brewed tea, was particularly nice too. They removed the tea leaves before giving it to me and it was brewed perfectly strong with a deep flavour.
The prep time for the food was fast enough that I was in and out in about half an hour. Will probably make a lunch stop here again.

This is always a fun place to stop for a quick bite. I love the tropical aesthetic with the feel of the open air cafe! It's the best when it's a nice (or just nice-ish) day and the windows are open and you can feel the breeze while you're inside... It seems like it's always busy around lunch, when I usually come, but I've always been able to find a spot inside or in the patio area.
Between this downtown location and the other cafes, I've been here many times and gotten the chance to try a lot of the menu. There are always a few very cool seasonal drinks which keeps things fresh. My personal favourites for food are the veggie quiche and the guava loaf (or whatever seasonal loaf is available), but everything is great. For drinks, I usually go for whatever is seasonal, but they also do really good matcha lattes, and lattes are very good too - again, you can't go wrong. It's a little expensive but it's all really good stuff!
They have a small retail selection where you can buy their jams, dressings, beans, and merchandise. I'm not much of a coffee nerd but if you are, they have a few different unique beans from Hawaii here.

This shop is a small and simple operation, which isn't what I'm usually drawn to, but they nailed it for me today. I came to try the Polish Pillow! It's a unique drink - the taste is not quite the same as coffee but very similar, and the raspberry and almond flavour is very nice, not too sweet. I'm pretty sensitive to caffeine so I'm glad this is caffeine free! I also had their vegan wrap and a cranberry pecan spice cookie for my lunch while I was here, both of which were very satisfying. The typical coffee shop jumbo cookie is bigger than I usually want so I like that they sell small cookies designed to accompany a drink here (there are bigger ones too).
The staff was polite, and everything I ordered was presented very neatly which was a nice touch. It's not the trendiest coffee shop, but I found the unpretentious vibe to be very approachable and refreshing.