Gwilym Davies & Jeremy Challender

The London-based baristas Jeremy Challender and Gwilym Davies, co-directors of Prufrock Coffee, possess the same perfectionism, if not the sadism sometimes associated with it. When asked what makes Davies, the 2009 World Barista Champion, special I refer to his habit of pulling beautiful espressos and then enumerating their minute faults. I’ve never found cause to send back a coffee prepared for me by Davies but he has. Twice he’s taken back my espresso before I’ve had a chance to sip it. You might conclude this was due to my having overestimated Davies’ skills as a coffee preparer or, more likely, his having overestimated mine as a coffee taster. But I think was more about fussiness and an uncompromising formula for greatness: 50 imperceptible adjustments = 1 big difference.

The Prufrock difference debuted with an espresso trolley rolled into Present, a menswear boutique in Shoreditch. (Prufrock has opened a second menswear boutique espresso bar at Woodhouse in Notthing Hill.) Now it can be experienced in a real coffee shop at 23 Leather Lane, midway between Clerkenwell Road and High Holborn, with plenty of space for not only tables and groovy Ron Arad Tom Vac plastic chairs but also a siphon and pour-through brew bar. During a recent visit there were some 25 people in the new Prufock Coffee Shop and none were in a rush to leave. The only one who seemed genuinely unhappy with the coffee was – you guessed it – Davies.

Turns out Davies and his colleagues were less proud than they were defensive about these knobs. Employing tampers outside their shop at 23-25 Leather Lane in London (EC1) indicated they’d been removed from their intended use. To some this might have violated an ethos of the trade.

Prufrock barista David Robson noted a practical benefit: Davies was always instructing novices to hold the tamper like a door knob. The tampers on the front doors would serve as an early reminder for students attending the barista training school soon to open in the spacious coffee shop’s basement. So clever, I thought: In their spare time the trainees could practice their tamping skills by opening and closing the front doors for customers.

Prufrock co-director Jeremy Challender maintained that the tampers were the wrong size for their espresso machines. Redeploying them as knobs amounted to recycling. Davies essentially said the same thing, only in the wordier fashion that is amongst his personal gifts.

They [the tampers] have been following me around for a few years since a lady customer closed her coffee business down when she moved back to the states. You can see from the right-hand side one it says 55mm on it. Our machines use 58mm baskets. I kept trying to give them away to home espresso users but they kept returning them as they were not the right size…

Okay, Gwilym, you’re forgiven.

Personally I have no objection to their using tampers as doorknobs. It’s good design as well as a groovy decorative touch for a coffee shop or even the home of a coffee enthusiast. Thinking I myself might appropriate the idea for a new closet we were installing in our London flat I browsed Prufrock’s shelf display of knobby tampers.

I liked the black-handled one (extreme right) best but was informed it was not for sale to anyone, anywhere. Not even if I promised to use it as a tamper and never as a knob? No. Not now. Not ever. This sounded unreasonable to me, until I had a closer look at the black doorknob, er, tamper I fancied:

Was I experiencing the sort of snow-blinding delirium familiar to frostbitten mountain climbers with empty coffee thermoses? With the UK’s coalition government slashing funding for education, councils and the National Health Service this would hardly be the time to open any new agency at all. But even in times of budget surpluses you would hardly expect the British to be the first to open such a ministry, as essential as its services might be towards promoting commerce, creativity, public health, social interaction, happiness and alertness at boring meetings. I could see flaky cities like Seattle, Oslo, Vienna, Auckland or Trieste having a Department of Coffee and Social Affairs, but not London.

Alas there is no UK government or Camden Council office known as the DCSA at 14-15 Leather Lane in London EC1. If there were there wouldn’t be people in there working – and appearing to enjoy their work – on a Saturday. Instead this is a private enterprise, a manifestation, perhaps, of David Cameron’s ‘big society’ vision, which, in the Prime Minister’s words, is about nothing less than “liberation, the biggest, most dramatic redistribution of power from elites in Whitehall to the man and woman on the street”. Others might describe the PM’s bold initiative more succinctly by the acronym GFY, which doesn’t necessary mean “good for you”.

Chris McKie and Tim Ridley

Turns out the Department of Coffee and Social Affairs is what 99.9% percent of us know as a coffee shop. The two visionaries who see it as something far greater are the Antepodeans Chris McKie and Tim Ridley, who, with Stefan Allesch-Taylor, are co-founders of something called the Coffeesmiths Collective. I visited the website to learn more about it, came across a recent post titled “Dialectic: Consequences of Enlightenment” and immediately suspended my investigation.

The Department of Coffee and Social Affairs essentials are as follows:

• The beans, sourced from East London roaster Climpson & Sons, yield good espresso.
• The space, stripped down to a patchwork of brick, wood, steel and concrete, is subdivided into smaller spaces suited for inclusion or seclusion.
• It is open Monday to Friday 8am to 4:30pm, Saturday 10am to 4pm.
• Dialectic: Consequences of Enlightenment is the title of an exhibition of paintings by East London artist Ben Jamie, on view at the coffee shop now until February 19th.