On Monday, a man came into Snakes and Lattes with a laptop and an expectation: coffee and the Internet.

He was told he best slow down with his notions. This here is board game town.

“It’s a different social experience sitting face to face,” said Castanie, who presides over the wall-to-wall board game palace at Bloor St. and Palmerston Ave., with his partner Aurelia Peynet.

Cafes like Snakes and Lattes represent an emerging trend of coffee shops going off the grid, said Bryant Simon, author of Everything but the Coffee, a book about Starbucks’ popularity.

Simon, director of the American Studies program at Temple University, said wireless Internet used to be the competitive edge for independent coffee shops. But since Starbucks started offering unlimited Wi-Fi this summer, the chance of human interaction without modems is a good way to stick out from the rows of people sipping on Americanos with their faces glued to Facebook.

“On one hand, it’s an office away from the office,” Simon said of the role of coffee shops in society. “The other more idealized version is being played out as the anti-wireless thing. People fear that all the online stuff threatens conversation.”

Castanie and Peynet moved to Toronto from France four years ago. The idea for the cafe came to them when they were browsing a game shop in Chicago. For the last two years, they have scoured the Internet, Value Village and toy stores to create a collection of 1,500 games, including obscure classics like Fireball Island, and other delights like Mall Madness and Settlers of Catan. For $5, customers have unlimited access to the collection and Castanie’s expertise. A liquor licence is in the works.

Castanie is no Luddite. He carries a BlackBerry and the coffee shop has a Facebook page. People who came on opening day made a big splash on Twitter.

Sidney Eve Matrix, a professor of digital culture studies at Queen’s University, said playing Scrabble and “depriving people of the tools they need to be productive” won’t bring humanity back to a simpler time.

Castanie realizes that, and he hasn’t ruled out offering Internet. It’s just not part of the business plan yet.

“We have to draw people in, and we have to pay the rent,” he added.

Simon said the key to success for a non-wireless café is to have wireless options nearby, so people can choose their location based on the expected experience.

At Saving Gigi, a café on Bloor St. near Ossington Ave., Robin Hatch and Adam Benzan prefer their coffee with a side of laptop.

Hatch jokes that for every person who prefers the connected route, there is likely a “30-something jaded hipster” who wants to play board games.

“Maybe hipster is the wrong word,” she said.

Saving Gigi owner Amelia Laidlaw said wireless was a natural choice for the shop she runs with Kristjan Harris.

“People used to sit and read books in coffee shops, and now more people read on computers,” she said.

At Linux Café on Harbord St., the wireless is also free. But owner David Patrick thinks it’s a smart thing to pull away from the flood of modern connectivity.

“We’re not all, ‘Welcome to Linux Café, you must have a laptop,’ ” Patrick said, with a put-on Arnold Schwarzenegger accent.

And at Snakes and Lattes, they won’t throw you on the street if you show up with a laptop.

Take that man who came on opening day. Castanie eventually gave him the password for the wireless after hearing about the man’s desperation to send a work-related email.

Castanie is no totalitarian, just a man who believes that a lack of connectivity and a surplus of board games is good for the soul.