The area around St. Clair and Christie has a LOT of coffee shops - I've sometimes referred to it only semi-jokingly as the epicentre of caffeine in Toronto (which may have something to do with why I live there...). But I think Noir may be my very favourite - though really, I suppose it depends partly on what you're in the mood for.
If you want a funky, cool place where musicians and poets randomly jam, and small children can run around and play with the assortment of toys and musical instruments on the premises - then you want Ellington's, two blocks west. If you want a large, busy place where you can camp out with your laptop all day long and no one will notice or care, and that also has a good assortment of cheap, filling food, you want World Class Bakers, right across the street. If you want to be able to watch out the window and see if the $@#&! Christie bus is finally coming or not, you want the Starbucks on the corner (really, that's its only major virtue). But if you want a breathtakingly lovely little place with a serene and peaceful feel, where going for tea is an experience, which melts stress off you and makes you feel happy just to sit there in the tranquil, almost Zen-like environment and look around, then you want Noir.
I do think that despite coffee coming before tea in the name, they should probably be regarded as more of a tea shop than a coffee shop. Their coffee is fine, but it's nothing out of the ordinary, at least for good independent cafes. But their tea selection, and the way they serve it, is really a cut above the vast majority of other places. They have a really good assortment of high-quality, loose-leaf teas, some of which are not easy to find anywhere else, and they know exactly how to make it perfectly and serve it attractively. I blanched a little at the price the first time, but given that it comes in a pot that holds 2-3 cups, it's actually not bad - you're not paying for just a single cup. In the summer you can also get any of their teas iced - and it's freshly made, and unsweetened, just the way I like it.
The food selections are nice, and definitely include a few things outside the usual range you'd find in most coffee/tea places. And while they do have free wi-fi, as others have mentioned, the time is limited, because I it's not really intended primarily as a work/study environment. Really, I don't think it's the food or the wi-fi that most people go for. It's the tea, the aesthetics, and the peaceful ambiance. Every time I go in there, it seems like half my stress drops away, time stops, and I get a lovely little respite from the hectic pace of daily life. For me, that's worth paying $4 for a pot of tea.