Glasfurd & Walker – Caffe La Tana

La Tana is a grocery store, neighbourhood cafe, and pasta house stocked with the finest imported Italian goods, and serving house-made pastas, pastries, and strong, traditional espresso. Translated from “the den”, La Tana’s Italian name offers a nod and a home to the namesake fox of sister restaurant Savio Volpe, becoming a gathering place on Vancouver’s Commercial Drive.In an area rich with Italian immigrant history, La Tana takes its design cue from old world Italy, inspired by the country’s alimentari—small, often family-run shops with grocery staples—and stile liberty graphic design applied to the space in glints of gold leaf. Labels for house olive oils and vinegars feature illustrations of their key ingredients styled after 1920’s product posters, while takeaway coffee cups are wrapped in lush landscapes by Romantic artist Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot. Composed from the French painter’s sketches collected during his famous trips to study Italian Renaissance, the dreamy scenes offer a connection to way La Tana itself was built on the memories of the proprietor/interior designer’s own travels throughout the country.For the launch of the brand, a series of images showed a fox foraging for pastries in the cafe after dark. A silhouette of the curious creature can be found hidden throughout the cafe’s custom filigree and pattern that adorns the packaging. Customers take their own treats home in verdant boxes designed with longevity in mind, to be savoured like the goods they once held long after the pastries have been consumed.