hain café: there are a dozen people waiting for coffee, the place is overly bright, and the service frosty, but you’ve grown accustomed to it. People in line look at their watches, waiting behind someone ordering a low-fat mocha decaf with extra foam. The coffee station is a mess, the crowded location is made unbearable by corporately backed muzak, and you pass time reading a CD cover amidst the counter's plethoric impulse buys: CDs, travel mugs and post-coffee mints.

Meanwhile, across town, the air in B Espresso - the power coffee spot - is fragrant with coffee, and the room quiet: no jostling, plenty of servers dispensing from the station so that no one waits more than a minute for their orders. Coffees - four varieties, so you can leave your Starbucks ordering booklet at home for this one - are served steaming and bracing.

B represents a move up the scale in the coffee hierarchy. It's a coffee bar, Italian style. Staffers look as though they flew in directly from the boot. Dapper baristas hover over the espresso machine, while the svelte servers sashay about the room clearing tables. Newspapers and glossy magazines sit neatly in racks, and a placard hanging from above proclaims that only Illy coffee beans are used.

B - located in the Robertson Chocolate Factory (City-TV’s former residence) - is the only culinary surprise in the area. In its audacious sleekness, B Espresso is an homage to the spirited espresso bars in Italy, where the venues are an extension of life, not just a shop churning out brew. Owned and operated by Bruno Colozza, B doesn't intend to give the almighty Starbucks a run for its money, but rather to offer Torontonians a chance to have a true espresso.

When St. Joseph Media purchased the 130-year-old building it rapidly filled with media and ad agencies such as Publicis and Top Advertising. Colozza saw potential in the street-level space and commissioned Anna Simone of Cecconi Simone Design to take the raw space and turn it into the aggressively cool espresso bar setting it now is.