If you’re craving a proper Flat White and an Australian meat pie, Coyotes Cafe is a must visit. This family owned cafe pop-up first started serving their signature combination of Melbourne-style coffee and savoury meat pies back in December of 2024.
A True Blue Family Business
Esther Ling and Ryan Neale are the husband and wife team behind Coyotes Cafe.
While Ling had been working in coffee for years, she first started making meat pies to fill a family void. Neale loves pies. Before he moved to Canada from Australia, he used to eat them daily.
His background is in engineering and he explains that when he was a junior going through his apprenticeship he was the one the guys would send to pick up all their lunchtime pie orders.
Since moving to Canada, he was missing meat pies dearly. So, Ling starting playing around at pie-making.
Filling the Aussie Pie Void
Then, when the couple decided to do a coffee pop-up for the first time, they started brainstorming what they else they could offer to make them stand out.
The meat pies Ling was making were delicious, as Neale could confirm. They were also a self-contained, single-serving food item that could be prepped ahead of time. Ling and Neale also recognized that Aussie meat pies would be a unique food offering.
Ling recalls, “We just went with pies, and it kind of blew up.”
Being an ultimate comfort food, the pies also represent the couple’s hospitality philosophy. They want their customers to feel like family: “We wanted everyone to feel loved and welcomed and we wanted to kind of like push that through food as well because food is part of our love language.”
Coyotes Cafe is Born
The menu at Coyotes Cafe includes Aussie classics like Beef & Mushroom and Brisket & Black Pepper as well as a substantial pork & fennel Sausage Roll and a vegetarian version with cashew, mushroom, and leek.
A delicious option available for all the pies, as well as the sausage rolls, is to get them “Fully Loaded” which means topped with mashed potatoes, mushy peas, and savoury gravy. I highly recommend that you get the Sausage Roll fully loaded. The pies are also tasty topped but I feel the flaky pastry is best enjoyed without additional toppings.
Alongside the classics, the Coyotes Cafe team like to get creative. As Neale explains, “We like to keep it kind of fresh too!”
On my first visit, they had a special Poutine pie that was stuffed with their tender and juicy brisket as well as rich gravy and, of course, cheese curds. Most recently, Coyotes was featuring a beef pie with cheese again, this time cheddar, and sliced jalapeños.
Special, limited time menu items are a tantalizing part of restaurant pop-ups. When a special item is introduced, it may only be available once. Even customers who have already visited could be tempted to return.
Although it seems Coyotes Cafe is not struggling to tempt customers to return. They regularly have line-ups out the door and sell out. While their pop-ups have mostly been in Mount Pleasant, a stint at Toña on Dunbar made them realize that die-hard customers would cross the city for them.
Where and When to Find Them
Currently, Coyotes Cafe is popping up every weekend at Laura’s Coffee Shop, which is at the border of Olympic Village and Mount Pleasant at 1945 Manitoba Street. They’ve been calling Laura’s home since April and will be there every weekend in June as well.
Coyotes Cafe is looking for a permanent home. It will likely be in Mount Pleasant, but they will keep popping up for the foreseeable future. “We don’t have a timeline for a cafe right now,” Ling explains, “We’re hoping for, like, next year.”
Popping up is a grind for the team who have to bring everything they need from the pies themselves to the pie warmer to the espresso machine, and the water for the espresso machine. Given this weekly set up and tear down, it is impressive that their coffee program is a well dialled in as it is.
Coming up, the Coyotes Cafe team will be making their pies more widely available. They’re about to launch a direct order frozen pies available under a new name: True Blue Pies. These frozen pies will also be available at local farmers’ markets. So, if you can’t make it to one of their weekend pop-ups, don’t despair.
While logistics (and website) are in progress, give them a follow on Instagram. Neale promises of the new True Blue venture: “If you buy enough, I will deliver them to you. It’d be nice to get on my motorcycle and deliver some pies; that would be really fun.”
