Ethica Coffee Roasters

Ethica opened on Sterling Road in November 2019, just months before the pandemic reshaped how every cafe in the city operated, taking its name from Spinoza's Ethica, a nod toward reasoned, deliberate choices in how the coffee gets sourced and roasted. The industrial space runs long and open, with locally built Tice tables under high ceilings, prints by artist Anthony Burrill on the walls, and a washroom deliberately built to look like the inside of a shipping container.

Coffee gets roasted on site on a small Dutch built Giesen machine that customers can watch working from the counter, turning out lattes, an espresso tonic made with Fever Tree, and a European style vanilla raf sweetened with vanilla sugar. A short food menu of sandwiches, wraps, and pastries rounds things out, and in a genuinely odd touch the shop doubles as a functioning postal outpost, selling postcards and stamping mail for a few dollars a letter.