Bridgehead

It’s a relaxed place. I stopped in for a quick iced drunk and an almond croissant on a hot day. Tried the espresso cream crush which was pretty awesome. Wished it were a larger cup. We also tried the citrus green iced drink. It was lightly flavored. Croissant was wholesome buttery goodness.
There’s ample seating on a normal day and people seemed to find this place a good one to get work done.

Such a nice relaxing little coffee shop. No point of starbucks when you can get twice as better coffee here. Good vibes and great drinks (get the latte)

I don’t honestly understand why anyone would go to Starbucks when they could choose between Bridgehead and another fancy coffee place. Bridgehead is fantastic. Really fantastic.
The service is great, the staff are super friendly and attentive. I am never upset when I head in there, sometimes I find other coffee shop staff to be a little disgruntled.
They also have a pretty decent selection of different baked goods that are baked especially for them. They have a great spelt flour banana loaf that is worth checking out.
On weekends Bridgehead is always packed, it can be challenging to find a place to sit and enjoy your coffee but that’s not a bad thing. It’s always super lively and a great place to people watch, even when the downtown core is vacated.
They also have a maple latte. I could probably write an entire review on the maple latte. It’s fresh, it’s yummy, it uses real maple syrup and is absolutely addictive. Mmmm good.

Exactly what Samantha M. said earlier (I’m the friend that went with her). I have no idea how they managed to make hot chocolate incessantly greasy but they accomplished the feat. Also, they prompted me to fill out a massive form of personal information just to use their wifi and the staff was unprofessional, inattentive and were mostly just horsing around with each other and not really paying attention to their surroundings.

Not too impressed with this bridgehead. Came here today with a friend because I swore their hot chocolate was awesome (it is definitely awesome at the Hintonburg location). We also needed wifi so we decided to sit down and have a drink. I ordered an iced lemon green tea on ice and he of course got the hot chocolate.
Just a heads up, if you order their iced tea they don’t sweeten it, you need to ask for it to be sweetened. The tea wasn’t steeped enough and was fairly bland and I threw most of it out. The hot chocolate was the real loser though, the barista asked my friend if he wanted whip on his hot chocolate and he said sure and I guess she really took that to heart because literally ½ of his drink was whipped cream. There were about 3 inches of whipped cream coming out of his cup and then once he scraped all of it off there was like half of the hot chocolate left.
After complaining they made us a second one. And guess what? They added a TON of whip again too! Not as much this time but ¾ of the cup was hot chocolate while the rest was whipped cream. I don’t know if it was some type of unfunny joke but I wasn’t impressed. I didn’t try any but apparently the whip was unsweetened and flavorless. Bridgehead coffee is expensive and its bad enough their sizes are on the small size, but to leave ¼ of the cup empty is a rip off.
It was embarrassing my friend disliked his hot chocolate so much because I really hyped this place up.

The location has a nice little patio setup for watching the world go by if you are so inclined.

Every time I come to Ottawa for my layovers, I make it a point to come for their coffee and stock up on the best granola I’ve had yet. There are many coffee shops around my hotel, but I will brave the cold and walk the extra 5 minutes to get here. (Us Vancouverites are wusses when it comes to cold) Coffee is brewed with care and staff is friendly. The granola is on the pricier side, but oh so good!

My grumpiness towards all things Bridgehead continues. They still have the dumb little metal stools that are noisy and uncomfortable and look like they came out of a meccano set but the thing that makes me the grumpiest is their dorky wifi policy. I went to Bridgehead recently to meet friends. Friends left, I went to ‘barista’ to ask for wifi password to check email. She looked at me like I had just stumbled in off the street to steal their wifi (I am a middle-​aged woman in business attire). Barista told me that only cashier could give me the password. Line-​up at cashier was five deep. Really? I left. Not coming back. Nobody beats Bucks.

I came here on a summer night with a friend to play catch-​up. I’d seen many locations here in Ottawa (MAYBE 1 in Toronto), so it was nice to give it a try. The place was pretty packed, but there wasn’t too much space to begin with. We sat on one of the couches, as the tables were all taken by people on their laptops. I ordered a mocha, which came with heart-​shaped froth. It was rich, strong, and sweet. It cost a little more than your standard Timmy’s, but the quality was much better. The service was pretty fast considering how many people there were, and the staff was very nice and patient with me, knowing I’d never been there before. Even though we only ordered a couple of coffees and a cookie, we sat there for over an hour talking and were never asked to leave, nor did we feel like we had to. Great place to have a fancier coffee and catch up with friends!

On a gorgeous sunny afternoon like today’s, the small clusters of happy people sipping their cups of joe leisurely at small tables right on the sidewalk was the best advertisement this Bridgehead location could have put out. Inside, the high ceilinged, glass storefronted, airy room features the seating options of low plush armed chairs, small tables equipped with designer industrial metal chairs, and hightop banquettes with matching metal stools.
All set to an exposed brick wall, this casually cool setting seemed to be the place to be. In just under an hour, I spotted everyone from families with small children, pierced teens with skateboards, freelancers with Macs, and shirt-​and-​ties.
The writing on the wall says a lot — There are explanations for ‘organic’ and ‘fairtrade’ — but Bridgehead is so much more. Besides offering delicious coffees, loose leaf teas, a number of summer drinks including organic lemonade, and a large assortment of muffins and pastries, you can also find handmade fragrant Bridgehead Kitchen branded granola (which I couldn’t resist purchasing a large tub of and sampling immediately) and the increasingly popular Cocoa Camino chocolate bars in a variety of exhilarating flavours.
I was pleased to find out that bringing my own travel mug would get me a whopping 27 cent discount (that’s more than double that of most of the competition’s! Coffee culture is an expensive one, so every penny counts.), but also glad to hear that all the paper cups are fully compostable for anyone who doesn’t bring their own. The chai latte, my beverage of choice, was wonderfully fragrant, but not a bit too sweet.

Went here the other day for a catch up with my big sis and it was the perfect setting. There was space for us (after some bags and feet were moved) and yet the place was buzzing with people coming in and out, sitting down and not.
The service was really quick but I can see how a place like this can get bogged down during peak hours. The chai latté was delicious with its sprinkle of cinnamon on top, though it could have been a bit hotter. My sister was jealous. Together we shared a corner piece of a pecan and chocolate square. We had to work our forks in pretty hard for each bite. I preferred the crunchier edging, she didn’t. She also got the booth while I was stuck on a stool with no backing. Siblings.
I want to give this Bridgehead a 3.5 but Unilocal won’t let me do that, so it’s stuck at a 3. Nothing absolutely, completely blew my mind but it was all solid and tasty.