Cafe Nikoletta is a new cafe in East York that looks like it was pulled from one of those design blogs flouncily showing off and advocating for stark all-white interiors . In a good way, I mean. This is one of those coffee houses where you feel comfortable lounging for a while and drooling a little over the scenery.

The entire front of the cafe was stripped off and replaced with a sheet of glass to allow for maximum light. Cafe Nikoletta is a narrow, intimate space reminiscent of a hypothetical salon that might belong to a lesser André Leon Talley. Nestled in beside the Leslieville Cheese Market , it fills in a gap along Donlands just south of O'Connor, too.

I pop in to check it out about three months after they open, on one of those sweaty summer days that are always so poignant in Toronto. I'm not a morning person, and I'm saving my first-coffee-of-the-day experience just for Cafe Nikoletta. I'm rarely in a good mood before noon, but this spot does it for me.

First of all, Irena the barista is a delightful human being. She sees how grumpy I am and immediately starts trying to cheer me up with stories about crazy rent and her time spent going to school in Poland. She asks me if I want a smaller Americano or a larger one, and I order the small because it means less water and a greater concentration of desperately-needed caffeine.

The coffee (from Social ) is delicious. Irena tells me it's a Brazilian/Mexican blend. Just the smell of it makes me happy, and it tastes the way it smells: sultry, chocolatey, and smoky in a bitter sort of way.

Cafe Nikoletta offers more in the way of food than many cafes in the city. They do various sandwiches (including croissant sandwiches with cream cheese), couscous salad, and pasta salad. There's also the standard breakfasty snack options, like carrot loaf and cookies (yeah, I eat cookies for breakfast. Glad we've got that out there).

Irena hooks me up with some pasta salad. It tastes like the delicious baby of a burrito and an Italian pasta salad. Weird, I know, but it was actually quite good. There were black beans and corn kernels alongside cucumber morsels and tomatoes, and it was tossed with a perfect amount of tangy Italian dressing. I'm surprised at the availability of so many more savoury snack options than sweet, but Irena says they listened to customer requests to arrive at their current offerings. She says the menu will continue to evolve as time goes on, too.

If you live or work in the area and have some time to kill, this is a lovely spot to relax with a book and grab a snack. There's seating for about 10 including the small outdoor seating area, so it's not the best spot for group dates. And they don't have WiFi available, either. But, regardless of that, because of the decor, snack options and awesome service, visiting Cafe Nikoletta feels like taking a mini-vacation, and I would highly recommend.

Thanks to the New Listerine UltraClean for sponsoring our coffee-fueled adventures .

Photos by Jesse Milns