Jan. 26, 2005 - Issue #484: The Hidden Cameras
Leave it to Leva
Chic café serves impeccable paninis, flawless cappuccinos and some pretty decent salads too
Wouldn’t it be nice to find a café that was warm and friendly but also hip, cool and brimming with Euro chic? A place filled with chatty regulars, but where a newcomer is always welcome? Well, as it turns out, Leva is just such a place. Neatly camouflaged in the residential neighbourhood just south of the Timms Centre for the Arts at the U of A, you wouldn’t be the first to miss it entirely while wandering past. The smallish, cozy-but-stylish interior was packed with diners when we walked through the frosty doorway at the tail end of the lunch rush on a Saturday afternoon. We made our way to the counter, taking a look over the menu on the wall behind the espresso bar.
After a few minutes of deliberation, we picked a couple of paninis. I, guilty about all the meat I’d consumed during the Vue Weekly toasted sandwich challenge a couple of weeks back, picked the veggie panini ($5.50), which was filled with green peppers, olives, tomatoes, banana peppers and onions. My wife picked the delicious-sounding pesto chicken panini (also $5.50), which I had wanted to order, but didn’t. Each came with a side salad, which were on display in the refrigerated glass case by the till; I opted for the spiced chickpea salad while my wife decided to try the “spicy calabrese” green been salad (spiced green beans with hot pepper bits), both of which were served cold. For drinks, we went with bottles of Orangina ($2.50 each), satisfying the expensive carbonated orange juice habit that I picked up in Europe many years ago.
We paid, took our seats at one of the funky electric-lime-green tables and sipped our Oranginas while waiting for the paninis to grill. We surveyed the space around us. Starkly hip stainless steel counter? Check. Assorted, mostly tasteful Italian memorabilia? Check. Beautiful people chatting, enjoying perfect cappuccinos in bulbous little demitasses? Check. An adjacent room full of fancy commercial espresso machines? Ch— wha? Turns out Leva shares its space with a commercial espresso machinery shop, which explains the rows of grinders, bags of imported Danesi coffee beans and shiny steam wands attached to machines that look like they’d cost more than a new computer. It had a funny effect on the décor, implying that, if nothing else, Leva takes their coffee seriously.
Our sandwiches arrived quickly enough, and were quite good. My veggie panini was well-grilled, the vegetables inside were fresh and the slightly sour, vinegary taste of the chickpea salad stood in pleasant contrast to the sandwich. My wife loved her chicken pesto panini, and enjoyed the variety that the green bean salad added to her plate. Curious, I speared a couple of her green beans before she could stop me. They were good, but I must have nabbed one with a bit too much hot pepper stuck to it, as my wife could tell from my sudden lunge for the glass of Orangina.
On our way in, my wife had spotted the gelato counter opposite the espresso bar, and was more than a little eager to try one of their icy desserts. After finishing off our sandwiches and salads, we wandered over to the frozen goodies section, where we debated which flavours to pick. Though there were plenty to choose from, we went with a combination of chocolate gelato and a lemon sorbetto ($4.25 for a two-scoop bowl, which we shared). Since we couldn’t possibly leave Leva without ordering a good Italian-style coffee, I went back to the counter to grab a couple of cappuccinos ($3.50 each) while my wife took care of the gelato. I watched while the friendly fellow behind the espresso machine carefully poured the silky, frothy steamed milk into our demitasses, creating a swirling pattern of espresso and foam on the top of our coffees, stretching the limits of surface tension. The man was a pro.
I returned to the table with our coffees, my wife having patiently waited for me to return before starting on the gelato. The lemon sorbetto was fantastic, with a blend of sweet and sour citrus to dazzle our tastebuds, while the chocolate gelato’s creamy, rich flavour mingled with the tartness on our tongues. We tried to savour it. We tried to make it last. But we just couldn’t help ourselves. We’d polished off the bowl within a matter of minutes, taking sips of our amazing cappuccinos between spoonfuls.
While we could have called it quits after the sandwiches and Oranginas, which only cost us a total of $16, our extra desserts and coffees bumped the total up to a still very reasonable $27.25, including tax. That’s a great value, considering the amount of food that we had, the quality of the preparation and the fact that we were sitting in a cool, trendy establishment instead of a generic chain eatery. I can easily see Leva becoming one of my regular haunts, even if their perfect cappuccinos will make me poor in the process. V
Leva
11053-86 Ave • 433-5382
More info about Café Leva →
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