Downtown Community Highlights: Hardin Cafe

By Amna Nadeem | Dec 01, 2019 | Fort McMurray - Downtown

A Fresh, Chic, Cute Coffee Shop

Good news! We have a new cafe in town - Hardin Cafe - and it just opened this year in June.

This cute, new cafe has been getting better known day by day and offers some excellent options for cafe food. Hardin Cafe is situated right across from the Peter Pond Mall and is attached to Cosmos Pizza. It is very easy to find and is usually a very busy spot.

They have a wide range of goodies. Here are my top 4 picks:

  1. Salted caramel gelato
  2. Caramel macchiato
  3. Strawberry rolled ice-cream
  4. Delicious crepes topped with caramel
I promise I’m not obsessed with caramel, they just have really good treats! They also offer so many keto desserts that are all home-made.

Epic Gelato

...Now there’s a food that deserves its own blog subsection!

My favourite thing about Hardin Cafe is that it is one of only four places in town that sells gelato.

Now gelato IS something I am obsessed with. For those who don’t know, gelato is Italian, and kind of like ice cream, only so much better! It consists of less fat and sugar than regular ice cream, giving it a much richer texture. If you have not tried it yet, you have to check it out at Hardin Cafe as well as the other places in town that offer it:

They all have one thing in common, which is their delicious gelato from a brand based in St. Albert called Da Vinci Gelato.

What People Are Saying

It’s always a pleasure to see local business owners adding more options for the community, especially as other businesses have struggled lately, especially downtown Fort McMurray. Speaking of downtown, be sure to check out our blog on Avenue Coffee when you're done here.

You’ll find that online reviews for Hardin Cafe have been really good so far. I’ve asked a few locals if they enjoyed their experience, and common words they replied with were “pleasant”, “cute”, or “comfortable.” People evidently feel at home here.

Just Go

Still not convinced to grab your car keys and head down?

Just a few reasons why I think cafes are the “it” spot:

  • I can attend/host meetings
  • I can do homework
  • I can blog
  • It makes me feel boujee
  • It is the only public place you can go alone and not feel like a complete loser (apart from public bathrooms, but that doesn’t count right?)
One of my fun life goals is to have a go-to coffee shop just like Central Perk in Friends. Now that we keep adding more coffee shops in the city, it should be easier for me and others to find ‘that spot’.

Mind you, if you need to focus on work, for example, sometimes it’s easier to switch up the scenery every once in a while (that’s why you’ll often find me blogging in a coffee shop, instead of in the office). It’s nice to change scenery every once in a while to get back my mojo, you know?

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Amna Nadeem

A full-time Fort McMurray resident, Amna writes articles for The A-Team. She writes about things to do in Fort McMurray, and about life in Wood Buffalo, generally.

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