Italian fashion house Giorgio Armani just opened its first cafe in Canada, right inside Vancouver’s Oakridge Park.
Armani/Caffè opened on October 23 in the northeast corner of the indoor mall, right beside the new Giorgio Armani store.
It’s the brand’s third dining spot in North America, after Armani/Ristorante in New York and Armani/Caffè in Costa Mesa, California.
Elsewhere, Armani runs cafes and restaurants from Milan and Paris to Tokyo, Hong Kong and Dubai.
It opened the same day as the new Kith store a short walk away, so Oakridge had a busy one.
The menu leans Italian, split into salads and antipasti, toasts and bruschette, pastries, coffee, and a full bar.
On the pastry side, there are chocolate-filled cornetti, a vegan pistachio croissant, and matcha and lemon cruffins.
The savoury side runs from burrata with artichokes to avocado toast with smoked salmon and a bruschetta with ricotta, lemon and zucchini.
The coffee list covers the classics, from espresso and cortado to an Italian cappuccino, plus specialty lattes like dulce de leche and black sesame.
There’s an Armani signature iced tea and lemonade too.
After lunch, the bar pours Aperol and limoncello spritzes, Negronis and espresso martinis, with mocktails named A Morning in Amalfi and Tea on the Terrace.
The room is a showpiece of its own.
Striped stone walls carry the Armani/Caffè name in gold, with big gold palm fronds painted across them.
Grey-green leather chairs sit at small gold-trimmed tables, and potted palms line the low gold partitions.
Part of the seating spills out into the mall’s bright atrium, under tall windows, and the rest sits inside a glass-fronted room with the name glowing above the door.
It’s the kind of spot built for a long coffee break between shops, or a spritz with a friend before heading back out into the mall.
If you’re making the trip, head for the Giorgio Armani store and look for the palms.
Armani/Caffè joins other recent Vancouver openings like Läderach, Zab Bite Thai Express and CoCo.
Address
Oakridge Park, 650 W 41st Ave, Vancouver (northeast corner of the indoor mall, beside Giorgio Armani)
