Jeremy Challender and Gwilym Davies do not, as a general rule, wear £200 jeans but they seem to like pulling espressos in shops that sell them. The baristas behind Prufrock Coffee have parked an espresso machine just inside the shop window of Woodhouse, a designer menswear boutique at 189 Westbourne Grove in Notting Hill, West London (see map). Their other in-store espresso bar is in East London at the Shoreditch designer menswear boutique Present. [Read more...]
Great Coffee in West London? Somebody Pinch Me.
31 March 2011 By 5 Comments
2 Hip Haunts for 2-Wheeled Cafenatics
The London cafenatic’s Tour de France is a kilometre long, with no hills or turns from start to finish. It departs from look mum no hands, a garagehouse coffee shop at 49 Old St, and arrives at Rapha Cycle Club, a pop-up gallery, boutique and coffee bar at 146-148 Clerkenwell Rd. [Read more...]
8 July 2010 By 3 Comments
Penny University a London shrine to filter coffee
If you want to see a Londoner famous for his temperature control get a little hot and bothered, just tell James Hoffmann in the most noncommittal tone you can muster you thought one of his featured brews from Square Mile Coffee Roasters was “fine” or “okay”. Better still, tell the 2007 World Barista Champion that, upon reflection, you suppose his coffee shop in London’s Shoreditch, Penny University, “fills a hole”.
“Ambivalence,” says Hoffmann, “is a terrible thing”.
Conversely, saying you positively hate his prized Blackburn Estate coffee from Tanzania is likelier than not to make him smile and get his attention. A puritanical shrine to brewed coffee that deprives its would-be disciples of espresso, milk and sugar, Penny University is meant to provoke. And so Hoffmann will take a “definitely hate” over a “sort of like” any day, even if devotion and love are the rightful responses to this groundbreaking, unplugged, pop-up coffee shop. [Read more...]
3 June 2010 By 9 Comments
Next to Great Ormond Street Hospital, an ER for coffee lovers
The new ER near Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children employs some unorthodox methods for treating its patients: The nutrient drip comes from a La Marzocco espresso machine, not an IV apparatus. The restorative substance, C8H10N4O2, is contained in coffee beans from the London roaster Square Mile, not prescription medicines. And periodic doses of this made-to-order medicinal extraction, even when diluted and interwoven with warm milk to produce groovy, kid-friendly designs, are not recommended for children. [Read more...]
29 October 2009 By Leave a Comment
Pizza bianca romana conquers Londinium
The City of London was founded around 50 AD, when Emperor Claudius and his Roman army built a fortified settlement on the River Thames. Nearly 2000 years later, the scent of a quieter Roman invasion is wafting through the Londinium air, rousing knowing noses from their morning misery and lunchtime lethargy and pointing the way to the nearest of 5 bakeries emitting the heady fumes of pizza bianca romana. [Read more...]
6 June 2009 By Leave a Comment
