Caffe Fantastico

Service has really deteriorated here. I visited on the evening of mar 16, a Thursday and was treated with such arrogance and judgie behaviour. The experience made me uncomfortable. I guess next time I will just go across the street at Bubby roses where they have amazing food and great service. The waitress was rude to me and when I didn’t tip her she brought me my gin and tonic with a bug in it. Talk about vindictiveness…

Always a good stop for a real cuppa.
A community fixture in the colorful Quadra Village

Staff was super friendly! Breakfast sandwich was divine! And the Americano was super tasty!

Caffe Fantastico didn’t really live up to the hype. My friend and I specifically chose this location so that we could study and enjoy coffee. When I was called up to order by one barista another staff came and began talking to them, interrupting me, and I had to repeat my order. The same staff, when bring the food to our table, was quite rude when we asked if there was something wrong with the wifi as we couldn’t get it to work. She told us the wifi was fine and it was essentially our fault, and that it was less of a caffe and more of a restaurant. We moved closer to where we were told the router was and were able to get a signal.

Overall not impressed, we were paying customers and were not treated well at all by the staff.

*Edit* Given the owners response I would say if you need to study go somewhere else. We were not freeloading at this establishment, we collectively bought 3 drinks and 2 food items between the two of us but were still made to feel unwelcome.

Wow, this place serves a really good cup of Americano! The cafe is really big & spacious! It wasn’t too difficult to park a car. Excellent service!:)

Very knowledgeable about coffee and freshly roasted. However, I only come for the oatmeal. I know right? ! Portion is huge, tasty and they use something other than whole oats, I don’t know what it is. Nuts and maple syrup - delish!

uPDATE: they changed their oatmeal and haven’t been back

Grabbed a latte and breakfast sandwich to go. Quick service. Latte was great, they served it on my own mug. Breakfast sandwich was so good! Got bacon added, it was crispy and right on point.

We came to have breakfast and a coffee while on vacation and the server was rude, did not give us part of our order then seemed put out and as if we were trying to cheat her when we asked for it.
They gave everyone else a regular ceramic cup for their coffee but mine was dumped in a to go cup and left on the counter with no mention it was mine. Our breakfast was also in to go containers when we were clearly wanting to sit down.
Not hard to get a very unwelcoming feeling here.

I can't be in the area without making a stop for a bag of beans and a coffee for the road. The staff, even during the most frantic times of covid, are always very nice and helpful. The carrizal beans are my favorite!

I've been a Fantastico customer for as long as they've been in business, ️, great coffee, great service, always great staff. The owners are super community oriented and involved!
If you're visiting Victoria this is the best coffee, I'd you live in Victoria and have never tried Fantastico now's your chance!

If I could give them zero stars, i would. The food was good but that’s pretty much it. For someone who is in the customer service industry, the way they treated us makes me feel very disappointed. We ordered food for dine in, so we were told that our food will be delivered to our table, and naturally thought that our drinks will be delivered as well. We received one of our food order and had to remind them of the second one. We waited for our drink for 10 min, then decided to go to the bar and ask for our drinks. The barista acknowledged our orders and said it will be done shortly. After another 10 min, the server never got back to us and had to remind the barista of our order again. After waiting for our drink by the bar, we saw the server brought drinks another table. I felt that we were overlooked during our time here at Caffe Fantastico and we were not greeted with excellent customer service. This shop is more Caffe NOT Fantastico.

Consistently excellent coffee! Discovered it in 2015 and still one of my top fave coffee shops. LOVE it. Thank you to the beautiful team at Fantastico! And thank you for being groundbreakingly inclusive in the coffee world

This is my favorite cafe in Victoria. Fantastic coffee and breakfasts for a lovely relaxing morning, and a wonderful selection of BC wines and yummy options for later in the day! The owners are also very dedicated to the community.

Barista was very professional and friendly. Very happy to find a lovely spot to hang out with friends in town! Hot chocolate was mild but enjoyed it.

Great community-minded (and licensed!) cafe with their own roastery! This neighbourhood hub has an interesting and sophisticated menu without feeling pretentious or uninviting. The prices are going to be higher than your average double-double & donut, but are comparable to similar spots and to be expected. Try the hot apple cider!

My go-to Victoria cafe. Excellent coffee, skilled staff, warm vibe. Pretty much any drink you could order is great here. Oh, and their breakfast items are delicious-love the bagel with cream cheese and lox.

Love this joint- friendly staff, good eats, great nitro cold brew, sadly the coffee is terrible (way too acidic!), but am willing to overlook this.

Coffee honestly tasted weird and tangy, the Mexico malinal Nayarita is very acidic.
And the Costa Rica Diego abarca yellow honey tastes like someone spilled cumin into the roaster with a off rotten flavour which was really bizarre.

But it happens, wish they offered samples to order online to avoid a whole bag going to waste. 3 stars for the nice delivery:)

Called early to place a large order for bagels, trying to put my credit card down to prove and guarantee the Saturday morning pick-up - was told no constantly.

Came in the morning, ordered the 10 bagels and then was constantly berated by the staff. Telling me I should have called an order and I should expect to wait awhile.

I asked to define awhile and was proceeded to have eyes rolled at me and told 20 minutes which I said “OK, sounds good”. It’s really crazy that this tiny little coffee shop treats there customers so rudely. I’ve been to far busier, far nicer coffee shops that would blow this place out of the water.

Not worth visiting, I recommend going into the market square and hit up a place there! Way friendlier, way more choices and not so rude to paying customers.

Very knowledgeable about coffee and freshly roasted. However, I only come for the oatmeal. I know right? ! Portion is huge, tasty and they use something other than whole oats, I don’t know what it is. Nuts and maple syrup - delish!

A mostly good experience except they were sold out of a number of things. We found something we wanted only to be told it was also out and they were not sure how to do refunds. They eventually got it and our beverages were all good. Baked goods next time. I just added this and changed my rating from 4 stars. The server accosted a very elderly man with mobility issues. He was seated at a table and had a mask on but lifted it so that she could hear him. His breathing was laboured. She kept telling him to put his mask on. It’s hard to see an old guy made to struggle so much.

Best breakfast salad ever, and friendly service, and super easy location to connect with friends for a friendly catch-up in a local community!

The quality of the coffee and tea lattes here are unbeatable! I also appreciate the gluten free baked goods - the white chocolate oatmeal cookies and banana chocolate chip muffins are soo good!

Was super hungry and the first few bites of the chana patty were incredible! Loved the side salad too. Once my initial hunger pangs wore off I realized that the style of bun was too heavy for the contents of the 'wich- but the flavours were great and the cabbage side salad was super refreshing. Coffee is always amazing; the atmosphere is kinda bustling, plain cafe aesthetic which allows the flavours of the food and drink, and the highlights of conversation to be the most memorable part of the experience, which I think is cool. LOL.

First time coming here a few days ago, I picked up a cup of filter coffee to go, a pastry and a pack of freshly roasted beans of Ethiopia Ardi Anasora.
The buying experience was excellent, Fantastico's anti-Corona rules make sense, seem well thought through, keep the place safe but also efficient at the same time. One and a half years into this pandemic, they also blend nicely into the background of your coffee buying experience. Well done!
The pastry was excellent, (as a spoiled European foodie I can say that with confidence) as was the filter coffee. Truely outstanding though were the lightly roasted beans! The roaster brought out the complexity of this coffee, they did a great job there and even though this is a directly traded, single origin coffee it was still affordable. I'll be coming back for more, that's for sure!

I’d like to make note of the excellent service I have received from Nancy at the Quadra Street location. I had a minor issue with a Comandante C40 accessory, trivial at best. Nancy said she would call me once she had a replacement from Comandante. I was positive that I’d have to hound the Cafe to get this dealt with and that I wouldn’t receive a call - I was wrong. Nancy called once the part arrived and was a pleasure to deal with, there were zero issues exchanging the defective part and I didn’t have to do anything past our initial conversation.

I hope management takes note of how impressed I have been with the follow through and customer service provided by Nancy. I had debated buying the C40 online, there were plenty of options - I’m glad I didn’t. Buying local has paid dividends in this circumstance, I know where I will be buying accessories (picking two up tomorrow) and gifts in the future! Excellent products and excellent service!

I was shocked at the price I paid for 2 cups of medium coffee (almost 6 bucks) and the coffee was cold.

Fantastico is a lovely little coffee shop. Their breakfast sandwich was multiple levels up from the usual bland chain coffee shop fare. The atmosphere was a blend of modern, quirky and homey, and my server was delightful. All round a great place to start your day:)

Nobody wears masks. I see staff preparing food and coffee without masks. These people don't care about our health. Avoid this place.

Very good popular place with yummy food and great service! The coffee was wonderful. Great medium sized neighborhood cafe’. Street parking only. Children’s playground nearby. We will be back. Outdoor seating and bike parking available

Fantastic is right! Their gluten-free cookies are amazing and their gluten-free muffins are the best I have ever had!

I like this place, it has pretty good coffee. Not necessarily fantastic, but pretty good. Cafe Pretty Goodico, really.

Well presented food, that tasted great! Nice staff and cute decor. Only thing is the prices are a bit high for small portions. Don’t recommend their italian soda, but out of what we tried I really enjoyed the breakfast sandwich.

Espresso needed calibration. Beer was.tepid. Either fridge is too warm for beer, door was left open for hours, long beer line without proper cooling, or glassware was hot to achieve this temperature.

Service was nice:)

I don't drink coffee but use to get it for the ex wife.
Always friendly, pleasant atmosphere and very community oriented.

I love living close to here because it’s busy and has awesome breakfast sandwiches and great staff! Unfortunately I’m not a fan of the coffee. It’s super acidic/bitter (If you’ve tried 49th Parallel coffee and not a fan, it tastes like that). I would love it if they made/carried more than one drip coffee at a time so there were options. A dark roast would be fantastic! I usually don’t take anything in my coffee but unfortunately here I go straight for the cream. It just isn’t smooth.
Ambience is alright but could do with a makeover. It doesn’t have a cozy feel.
But like I said, great staff, great breakfast sandwiches and I often treat myself to one of their little morning glory muffins

AWFUL CUSTOMER SERVICE. I love everything local, but after this one experience I will never come back here. Wanted a refund, and the server couldnt even get the right refund nor able to successfully return my money to my card. And, then goes on to insist that money was returned to me.

Stayed at an Airbnb few minutes walk from here. It was the nearest cafe. Nice atmosphere. I ordered the toast with jam and it was super hearty. Also had a sour cherry hot chocolate which was amazing. It was a great flavor combo which reminds me of those cherry chocolate candies. Overall awesome customer service and really nice vibe.

Phenomenal cup of espresso.top notch service.wonderful atmosphere.will be back every time im im Victoria

This cafe is right next to a children's playground. The staff let me bring their mugs to the playground so i didnt have to use a paper cup. I really appreciated that!

Went to the till to order a coffee, the guy behind the counter at the expresso machine looked up and saw me and just carried on with what he was doing, pretending he didnt see me or want to help me The other girl saw me standing at the counter and just kept on doing what she was doing. No one even acknowledged me or made any attempt to take my order. I dont mind waiting at all if people are busy, but they just completed ignored me. After standing there for what felt like forever, i just left. Last time i will ever go there.

Bought their Peru coffee, grinded it up the way I like it at home, brewed it up and got a coffee that tastes suspiciously like.curry? Some sort of flavor note of tamarack? All the flavor notes are supposed to be like “chocolate” and “cinnamon” but I just keep getting curry.

Other than that, cute place, nice staff, nice coffee, but these Peru beans bug me a little bit. Every couple days, I try a different method or ratio for the brew, and I just keep getting stronger or weaker hints of curry.

Super chill friendliest, coziest cafe in Vic! Fresh beans and goodies (or craft beer if you prefer), perfect place to go to catchup with pals or solo for a brief study/work session.

Unique food but the service is very flawed. We ordered a simple cheese plate and waited and waited and waited. We grabbed up our number 24 table tent and went to check. Millenial number looks around then looks befuddled. She says, "there's nothing for a number 24, then just looks at me. Finally she decides to check with millenial number two. She has no clue either. She tells me she will sort it out.

We go back to the table and waited and waited and waited. I grabbed millenial three and explained the problem. She said she was just a dishwasher.

I said, get me the manager. Manager says, I am sorry, we will make it. We waited and waited. Manager brings it over, tells me that it took longer because there were two orders in front of us.

Basically we got put into the que after they lost our order and we had to ask twice to get it. No real remorse form them just excuses.

Later our friends remembered having a long wait last time they tried this place