Café Olimpico has operated on Rue Saint-Viateur in the Mile End since 1970 — a fact that matters in a city where the café culture changes as quickly as any other. The Italian-inflected diner style (terrazzo floors, long counter, traditional espresso programme) has not changed in its essentials, and the neighbourhood around it — once largely Italian and Jewish, now bilingual and culturally mixed — has maintained the café as its operational centre across the demographic shift. The coffee is espresso, prepared correctly; the seating is communal in the lunch-counter tradition. The queue on weekend mornings is long and moves quickly. The neighbourhood is best understood from the Olimpico counter: who arrives, how long they stay, what language they speak.
Mile End, Montréal, Canada