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www.eatdrink.ca
№ 38 | November/December 2012
restaurants
Blackwater Runs Deep Blackwater Coffee & Tea Company, in Sarnia By Jane Antoniak Additional Photos courtesy of Blackwater Coffe & Tea Co.
Photography by Bruce Fyfe
S
arnia’s main drag is gaining an increasingly funky vibe as more independent culinary businesses fill in historic empty spaces with interesting and eclectic dining options. Last issue we visited Lola’s and The Tree House. This issue we have found a warming cup of coffee and a comforting, tasty burger by visiting Blackwater Coffee & Tea Company. Located near the Imperial Theatre, Blackwa ter is Sarnia’s first and only coffee roastery. It is in full view, as the 22-pound bright red roaster sits right in the middle of the long and narrow mixed-styled restaurant. Owners Dave and Alyssa Duguay roast about 200 pounds of coffee a week, including beans from Ethiopia, Mexico, Peru, Honduras, and Indonesia. They make about six blends and do some customized roasting for restaurants in Sarnia including Maison St. Aubon, Sarnia Riding Club and Alternate Grounds (which was featured in eatdrink last summer). Dave’s house coffee is called Three Gringos, named after the three brothers who own Mountain View Estates Coffee in Toronto, where Dave trained and worked. “They are like brothers to me,” he says. He
Blackwater Owners Dave and Alyssa Duguay (right) have embraced the local food movement. The Coffee BBQ’d Burger (above) is the type of unique burger they feature every Friday.
worked in the coffee business in Toronto for 24 years, including time at Columbia Coffee and Tea Co., where he started as an apprentice right out of secondary school. In 2010, Dave and Alyssa were visiting her family in Sarnia. While Dave was making some sales calls, he met the owners of Blackwater. A short time later, he bought the place, which thrilled Alyssa, who was glad to return to her hometown. Alyssa had worked in Toronto for The Keg for 20 years and she was glad to pull up roots to return to a small town, the environment they wanted to be in to start a family. They now have two