Anthony Benda serving coffee at Café Myriade (Photo: The Montreal Gazette)

You may know Café Myriade as the coffee shop across from Concordia with the wood paneled terrace you can never find seat on, or as the coffee joint with a waiting line that winds out the front door. For an independent coffeehouse, these are normally good signs. It screams, "Good espresso found here."

Sitting down at a café, sipping your hot beverage, you rarely think about the owners of the place. If you frequent popular coffee chains, you've probably already built up the image of the money-hungry CEO. In the case of Café Myriade, it's worth knowing a little bit about the owners. The reason for Café Myriade's popularity and status as one of the best cafés in Montreal becomes a tad clearer after knowing the man behind the counter.

I've been known to daydream--a lot. Some consider it empty dreaming, I like to think of it as goal making. As a twenty-year-old full-fledged Montrealer, I've always imagined moving out of the city, even out of the country. Over the years I have discovered that coffee shops are the perfect spot to daydream about your future, about living elsewhere, about being the next great writer, about the things you should have said or would like to say. Even when not in coffee shops, I have found that they are the setting for most of my daydreams. In fact, a short story I wrote partly took place in a coffee shop! I began drinking coffee at six months old; an age some people would think is too young, but for Italians it was nothing out of the ordinary. However, against contrary belief, I've grown to an average height, and my brain seems to be fine.