But Square Mile co-owner James Hoffman dropped the coffee geekery for our meeting at Bulldog Edition, as the Ace’s coffee shop is known.

James Hoffmann

The 2007 World Barista Champion didn’t explain how the baristas were using a state-of-the-art espresso machine, the La Marzocco Strada, to brew filter coffee.  He uttered not a word about his groovy new grinder, eschewing the new-toys routine so beloved by his peers. He didn’t enumerate the features that would make his coffee equal or superior to that served by Stumptown Coffee Roasters at the Ace Hotel coffee shops in Portland and New York .

Hoffmann preferred instead to preach his new coffee-shop gospel:

No preaching.

Bulldog Edition baristas must neither critique nor educate customers, unless prompted. (“If they haven’t asked a question,” Hoffmann tells them, “they haven’t opted into the lecture.”) Their job is not to give people their ultimate coffee experience but rather to give them only what they need right now – typically a cup of hot coffee with or without milk.

Backed by friendly and courteous service Hoffmann insists Bulldog Edition be, in his words, “a coffee shop that reliably makes your day better”.

 
A coffee shop that makes your day better. Hmmm, try rolling that one around your tongue.

It’s odd to get a dose of all-American happy talk from any Briton, much less from Hoffmann, the coffee expert who, through his personal blog and company blog, has taught us so much about the ins and outs of coffee. But behind this promise is an acknowledgement that not everyone likes being told what they should and shouldn’t like.

“Coffee”, he says, “has replaced wine as the pretentious idiot drink. We’ve become the butt of jokes.”

Bulldog Edition is only Square Mile’s second venture into retail. The first, Penny University, was a pop-up brew bar opened in Shoreditch in 2010. A puritanical shrine to filter coffee, Penny U deprived its disciples of milk and sugar. It was meant to educate and even provoke.

 

His chosen name and equally groovy occupation notwithstanding, Styles (né Williams) has yet to win a following of barista groupies, if said species truly exists, perhaps because he won’t act the rockstar part. The only smashing down he cares to do is of barriers between the customer and the server. Elegant, perceptive and meticulous in his approach to coffee preparation and service, he, like Tobias Cockerill and Square Mile Coffee‘s James Hoffmann, his Penny University colleagues, is more a barista in the sommelier mould, minus the stuffiness. The soft-spoken Styles is macho deficient and he’s “totally okay with that”.

Next week Styles turns 29, which, in barista years, is the equivalent of 58. When he started in the biz it was so long ago he wasn’t even using the term barista yet. His job was that of “coffeemaker” at the Bratwurst Shop in Melbourne’s Queen Victoria Market, preparing 800-1000 barely drinkable coffees per day in a busy deli packed as tightly as, well, a bratwurst. Hemmed into the corner by the 130-kilo (287 lb) Korean man who worked beside him, Styles took to leaning on one foot and unwittingly kicking off the shoe from the other. At Penny University he’s worn tightly laced boots, rather than his preferred Vans or Cloggs, to control a tic he’s never managed to – sorry – kick.

The first great coffee of Styles’ life was prepared at Ray Cafe by barista Alex Anderson, who would later work in London at Flat White. Too intimidated to linger for long at what was then an ultra-cool bastion of Melbourne artists and musicians, Styles did not take his first sip of latte until he’d stepped outside. “I was blown away”, he recalls, adding that the surface of Anderson’s steamed milk “looked like white glass” (no bubbles).

Styles later landed a barista job at Ray Cafe and was blown away once more, this time “by how little I knew compared with what I thought I knew”. He stayed there for two years, working night jobs all the while, and, with more confidence than money to his name, travelled to London (via New York) in September 2006 without a return ticket. Upon clearing customs he took the tube from Heathrow to Piccadilly and walked to Flat White, a rite of passage for Antipodean arrivals.  “Flat White was the mecca for coffee”, he says. “No one touched them”. Styles stuck around Flat White for six months and paid close attention not only to the preparation of the coffee but also to the dynamics of the queue and customer involvement.

“Tim takes a huge amount of learning from each cafe experience”, notes Hoffmann, the co-patron of Penny University and the 2007 World Barista Champion. “He also has the wisdom to adapt his approach if the concept is very different to what he was doing before”.

Styles was increasingly intrigued by coffee shops which put the focus on their  baristas and let them take control of the experience. At the Intellgentsia coffee bar in the Silver Lake district of Los Angeles he observed how each customer was effectively met at the front of the queue by a person with a portafilter in his hand and a grinder at the ready. Moving along the counter from right to left the customer enjoyed easy access and interaction with those preparing his or her order. At the Intelligentsia in Venice, where Styles worked as a consultant at the time of its opening, the bar was replaced by four stations where customers would have a one-to-one interface with a barista.

Penny University, with only six seats, two baristas and no espresso, slowed that interface to a drip. As the acoustic counterparts to heavy-metal espresso machines, the pour-over and siphon brewers freed the baristas and customers to converse with each other in relative calm.

Styles obsessed about the operational details that would allow Penny U baristas to take control of the situation and share their excitement about the coffees without talking down to customers. To take one example, small water glasses were chosen so that the baristas would be refilling them often and subtly reminding customers they were being looked after.

Prior to its opening Styles predicted Penny U would confront a walkout rate of about 30 percent. The English were not accustomed to drinking filter coffee in cafés and they surely never encountered any who refused their requests for sugar and milk. Londoners, he reasoned, were introspective and difficult, unlike the forward-thinking, open-minded free spirits of Venice.

He was wrong. The walkout rate was negligible. Among some 2000 served there were only four requests for milk. This time it was London that blew the one-shoed barista away.

UPDATE: Penny University to pop down 30 July.

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.

Make no mistake, Penny U is a retail space built to showcase and sell coffees, Square Mile coffees to be precise. Fearing some might wrongly judge the quality of the coffees according to the expense of machinery used to brew them, equipment most can’t use at home, Hoffmann and his associate Tim Styles (above left), who runs the shop he helped design, have taken the low-tech route. They’ve eschewed £10,000 brewers in favour of three manual home brewers made by the Japanese glassware company Hario: the V60 paper-filtered pour-over, the TCA-Syphon (vacpot) and the woodneck cloth-filtered pour-over drip pot.

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By providing even water temperature and distribution for the proper measure of coffee grinds, these filter brewers help a barista produce a cup of great clarity and often sweetness that unmuddies the taster’s experience. For me, it’s easier to pick up the aroma and taste of hazelnuts in the Capao Chapada Diamantina from Brazil or red berry nuances in the Blackburn Estate than it would be in an espresso. You almost want to ask Hoffmann where he sourced the hazelnuts and strawberries, which is just the sort of naïve and deceptively simpleminded question he and Penny U baristas Styles and Tobias Cockerill crave.

Everything in the cup, notes Hoffmann, is “from the roasted seeds of coffee cherries. The spectrum of flavours when they’re ground and dissolved in hot water is unbelievable.”

I’m not giving up espresso and neither is Hoffmann.  But there’s no denying that as presented at Penny U the slow quiet of the pour-over and siphon brewing processes constitutes a spiritual retreat from the humming, hissing and clickety-clack of the typically frenetic espresso bar. Seated at the six-stool counter you find yourself possessing both the time and the inclination to ask Tim or Tobias about the coffee they’re methodically brewing for you. The baristas may be answering you but they’re talking to everyone in the shop. Soon you are exchanging thoughts with neighbours to your right and left. Conversation starts with coffee but strays easily away from it. That’s the coffeehouse experience.

You don’t need to spend much time studying Penny U to notice contradictions within its dogma. The coffee is said to be about the ingredient, not the brewer, yet the Hario coffee makers, on sale in the shop, are very nearly objects of worship. The results are said to be attainable at home, yet the care and precision of the accomplished baristas seems paramount – and irreplaceable. It’s a big part of the experience. Furthermore, the no-sugar policy is a great conceit. I rarely drink my coffee with sugar. I understand their wanting and even urging us to discover the character and natural sweetness of their coffees apart from – and uninfluenced by – the flavour of the sugar and, yes, the milk. But isn’t sugar dosage a coffee drinker’s prerogative? Shouldn’t he or she get to decide if a coffee roasted by Square Mile tastes better or worse with sugar ?

Hoffmann has good answers for these challenges and you may have a few of your own. Indeed you can’t very well have a “penny university”, as the estimated 400-500 coffeehouses of 17^th century London were known, without the certainty of a good debate. These haunts were so-nicknamed for the price of a coffee and the education that went with it.

An anonymous verse from that period went:

So great a Universitie, I think there ne’er was any

In which you may a Scholar be, for spending a penny

Penny University – 5 Redchurch Street, London EC 7DJ

Gwilym does not work at a coffee shop. He developed his championship form at a freestanding cart parked at the Whitecross Street food market (in front of yellow building at 149 Whitecross St – map) on weekdays from 8am to 2pm and behind the Columbia Road flower market (inside small flea market at 7B Ezra Street – see map) at the same time on Sundays. When he’s home in London, that’s where you are most likely to find him, except when he’s at Present, a fashionable menswear shop in Shoreditch (140 Shoreditch High Steet – see map). He’s parked a sleek white trolley to the left as you enter.

Though Gwilym is cannot always be presents to call the shots you are sure to find a very capable and sometimes accomplished barista pulling them. On Sundays you will often see Gwilym’s roaster,  Square Mile Coffee‘s James Hoffmann, who also happens to be the 2007 World Barista Champion, pulling shots and texturing milk.

When the new champion returned to London from the World Barista Championship I first caught up with him at Caffè Culture, a coffee trade show at London’s Olympia exhibition centre. I found him preparing coffees and holding court at the stand for Nuova Simonelli espresso machines. He seemed to be enjoying his newfound rock-star status.

In front of his fawning audience I reminded him that a few days before departing for the WBC in Atlanta he had confided that he hadn’t had much time to train and seemed to suggest that his goal was not to embarrass himself. The champ blushed.

So how, I asked, did he end up winning?

Like the Beatles in Hamburg, Gwilym perfected his act through raw performances under difficult conditions, preparing street coffees by the thousands in London. His game plan was to concentrate on making the best possible espresso and cappuccino, forgo points on presentation and not worry much about technical grading.

“I wasn’t polished,” he says, an understatement given that he had to repull a set of espressos in the WBC finals. “I ignored the technical judges. I just did what I do every day.”

Antipodean know-how and joviality invigorate the landscape for the top 10 coffee shops in London. Baristas from New Zealand and Australia transform waves of rich espresso and smoothly textured steamed milk into lattes so velvety you can barely see a bubble. Two Kiwi imports, Ozone Coffee and Allpress Espresso, have recently opened roasteries and coffee shops in London.

Yet it’s home-grown talent that represents the cream of the crema: Two of the last four World Barista Champions are British and work in London: 2007 winner James Hoffmann is co-owner of Square Mile Coffee Roasters, an artisan roaster supplying beans to half of the top 10 London coffee shops. 2009 champion Gwilym Davies co-operates the Prufrock Coffee Shop on Leather Lane, now the best coffee shop in London, as well as the “Prufrock” coffee trolley he and partner Jeremy Challender rolled into the menswear boutique Present. And Monmouth Coffee maintains world-class standards for sourcing, roasting and brewing beans while supporting small-batch indie roasters just getting into the act.

When this list was first posted in April 2009 I cautioned that the British capital wouldn’t be a coffee capital until the taste for excessively milky coffees receded and the best coffee shops looked beyond espresso to filter coffees. Those conditions have been met. In the months ahead we can expect to see more and more London coffee shops and even restaurants following the example of wonderful Caravan and roasting their own beans. More roasters and with it, a  greater diversity of roasting styles, can only benefit an already thriving coffee scene.

London’s top 10 coffee shops (see map) nurture a close-knit community of cafenatics who circulate around East London and the West End and cheer on each other. That fluidity can extend to the baristas. Their restlessness speeds staff turnover, making it problematic to position any one coffee shop atop another on this top 10 list. Barista skills are a main consideration in choosing the top 10, ahead of shop atmosphere and behind only coffee quality and consistency. To qualify as a coffee shop, coffee must be its primary focus. This eliminates from consideration cafés where food takes priority over coffee, however good their coffee service may be.

The top 10 coffee shops in London

1. Prufrock Coffee

The first bricks-and-mortar coffee shop operated by Gwilym Davies. Previously the 2009 World Barista Champion was pulling shots at two street carts and, more recently, an espresso trolley rolled into the menswear boutique Present. That trolley remains, but at the Prufrock coffee shop there is room to follow the action drip by drip at the brew bar or sit at tables and chat, read, work or pretend to work as Davies, partner Jeremy Challender and their accomplished baristas fuss over the details, small and smaller, that go into producing a truly great coffee with featured and seasonal beans from Square Mile. The lower level is home to the London Barista Resource & Training school, which may be reserved for barista training, cafe consultancy and hen nights.

Prufrock Coffee Shop – 23 Leather Lane, EC1
Prufrock at Present – 140 Shoreditch High Street, E1

2. Notes Music & Coffee

Notes does not compel you to compare espressos brewed from the beans of the Square Mile and world-class guest roasters. You’re not required to analyse the results of pressure profiling enabled by its La Marzocco Strada espresso machine. You’re not forced to sit at its brew bar, an homage to the tasting counter at the May-July 2010 pop-up Penny University, and try three filter coffees meticulously brewed by the syphon, V60 and drip pot (woodneck) methods. You don’t have to shop for CDs and DVDs, or sit comfortably for hours listening to them. You don’t even have to tie your visit to cultural attractions around nearby Trafalgar and Leicester Squares and, with the beautiful new location, Covent Garden. All you need to do is go.

31 St Martin’s Lane, WC2
36 Wellington Street, WC2

3. Monmouth Coffee

The great pioneer of pour-over filter coffee is so central to the Convent Garden area it almost seems as if the sundial pillar at Seven Dials is points north down the street that lent the coffee shop its name. Its velvety lattes are made with organic Jersey milk from Jeff Bowles in Somerset, making it one of the few coffee shops anywhere that takes its milk as seriously as its coffee. The best and maybe also the worst that can be said about London’s long-running, highest-quality roaster is that it hasn’t been influenced much by recent trends. Snug tables hidden in the rear must often be shared, when two knees can already seem two too many. The larger Monmouth outside Borough Market, with its pour-through cone filter bar, communal table and improvisational street theatre (otherwise known as a queue), is a must stop before, after and midway through visits to the food market. Monmouth’s Saturday annex has moved further east along the Bermondsey rail arches from its Maltby Street roastery to Spa Terminus.

Monmouth Covent Garden – 26 Monmouth Street, WC2
Monmouth Borough Market – 2 Park Street, SE1
Monmouth Bermondsey – 148 Spa Road, SE16

4. Milk Bar/Flat White

Milk Bar may share the same coffee and New Zealand lineage as Flat White, its older Soho sibling, but that doesn’t stop its devotees from insisting the spinoff is superior to – and cooler than – the original. While I can fault neither the espresso drinks nor the top baristas at either shop I fully understand such loyalties. Personally I’d rather the Milk Bar’s Matt not know when I am at Flat White, just as I’d prefer Flat White’s Cameron be kept in the dark about my visits to Milk Bar. Rest assured, at both shops the outstanding macchiato is made from the same custom espresso blend by roaster Square Mile, marked with the same three-swirl signature and delivered with the same Antipodean good cheer.

Milk Bar – 3 Bateman Street, W1
Flat White – 17 Berwick Street, W1

5. Tapped & Packed

Identified only by the “No. 26” and “No. 114” on its shopfronts, Tapped & Packed fills its grinders with two custom espresso blends from the West Midlands roaster Has Bean, a more nuanced one for espressos and americanos and a punchier one to cut through the milk in flat whites and lattes. Filter coffee, though less prominent than it the past, is brewed with great, drip-by-drip care. The best option of may relate to the length and quality of your coffee break: T&P’s finicky baristas are fine with quickies, sending you away with a takeaway cup inside a minute, yet encourage you to overstay your welcome at inviting tables, quiet corners and, at No. 114, glorious picture windows.

26 Rathbone Place, W1
114 Tottenham Court Rd, W1 

6. Nude Espresso

Nude was launched as a calming retreat from the outrageousness – and outrageously bad coffee – of Spitalfields and Brick Lane. Its new location, tucked into a quiet corner of leafy Soho Square, provides sanctuary from the insanity – and insanely bad coffee – of Oxford Street. The beans are roasted at Nude’s Brick Lane roastery, while the warm hospitality and milk-texturing techniques are exported from New Zealand and Australia. If you want the naked truth, Nude’s standing offer of a complimentary coffee with every 250-gram bag of coffee beans purchased is a no-brainer from both directions: If you’re buying beans you might as well have a coffee. If you’re having a coffee you might as well buy some beans.

Nude Espresso Spitalfields, 26 Hanbury Street, E1
Nude Espresso Soho, 19 Soho Square, W1

7. Workshop Coffee

Workshop may have started life in London as the Melboune import ST ALi, both in name and inspiration, but its coffee beans are transformed from green to brown in a roaster positioned some 10 metres behind the handsome Slayer espresso machine that fronts this brick-walled Clerkenwell duplex. With a choice ringside seat you can hear the roaster with one ear and the espresso machine with the other. The very good quality of the espresso drinks and filter coffees is on an upward trajectory, both here and at the satellite coffee bar formerly known as Sensory Lab in Marylebone, just north of the Oxford  Street department stores.

27 Clerkenwell Road, EC1
75 Wigmore Street, W1U

8. Dose Espresso

 Owner/barista James Phillips has moved his curvy red La Marzocco FB-80 espresso machine one door down on Long Lane into larger quarters split diagonally in a sharp design by Velorose. But it is the increase from 18 to 25 square metres that is most impressive to regulars thrilled to have a place to actually sit with coffees meticulously prepared with Square Mile beans. So will Phillips now change the name of his coffee shop to Doubledose? “Um”, he replies, “no”.

70 Long Lane, EC1

9. The Espresso Room

The overworked perfectionist behind this truly indie coffee shop offers proof you don’t need to have Antipodean ancestry to be an unflappably affable London barista. We’ll ignore the fact that British owner/operator Ben Townsend spent 8 years in Melbourne, acquiring Australian citizenship along the way. In his narrow shop, Ben fastidiously pulls every shot of Square Mile espresso as if it were lifesaving: Doctors at Great Ormond Street Hospital would be wise to prescribe 3 per day to their patients.

31-35 Great Ormond Street, WC1

10 Kaffeine

Kaffeine charges £2.50 for a latte, which, given the high rents for office space in Fitzrovia, has to be regarded as one of the great values in London. It’s a great spot to take a kaffeinated meeting or respite, with Square Mile beans extracted from Synesso Cyncra espresso machine. No, caffeine is not spelled with a K in Australia and New Zealand, from whence the owners and baristas came.

66 Great Titchfield Street, W1

View Top 10 Coffee Shops in London in a larger map