The fourth location of Prado opens tomorrow in the old Cafe Bica address around the corner from Granville Island. That’s 1809 Fir Street off W. 2nd Avenue, which puts it snugly in what (one assumes) a focus group of area business improvement managers have decided to call the “Armoury District”, no doubt to the resounding, reptilian applause of property development marketers (yay, the area’s very own East Village). Owner Sammy Piccolo took possession of the 1,000+ sqft space two weeks ago on February 15th, so it’s been an extremely tight turnaround. The 26 seater includes a kitchen that will bring a range of new additions to the Prado food line-up, including more vegan options, soups, sandwiches, French pastries, cakes and pies. The interior is pretty basic stuff with nods to the company’s recognizable design DNA: plenty of wood, Tudor/ecclesiastically grilled windows on the walls, omnipresent 49th Parallel Coffee branding, et cetera. This is a superb location with plenty of traffic coming to and from Granville Island, so I trust an established brand like Prado will do well in it. Bica had it good here for a very long time. The shots below were taken several days ago. Expect it to be prettier when it’s unveiled tomorrow. Take a look…
I went to Prado on Fir St. opening morning and ordered a large mocha. I was disappointed because they used chocolate syrup instead of real chocolate to make the mocha. The coffee was rather flavourless, also. The other cafes and bakeries in the neighborhood (Chocolate Arts and Beaucoup, and formerly Bica) all use real melted chocolate in their mochas, yet Prado is charging the same price as the other cafes. Real melted chocolate makes a far superior mocha. Also, when I visited Prado, I did not see any pastries.
Hi Bill
Sorry your stay wasn’t to your liking. I am positive we have pastries every morning by 7 am. Aorry you missed them. By the way we make our chocolate from scratch in all our locations, we also make our vanilla syrup from scratch as well and then put it into a bottle afterwards.
Please come again and say hi tomorrow would love to buy you another mocha or a pastry
Sammy Piccolo