Coffee

If you know me you will know I like my coffee. If you don’t know me and you read this post you will soon find out! I drink a lot of the stuff, (fresh, absolutely no instant), and I am pretty sure I am mostly fuelled by coffee. The other week I had no coffee all morning and by 1pm I felt terrible. I realise this probably isn’t a good thing but I’m not the sort of person who gives a shit, it is not like I am addicted to smack now is it?

Anyway, recently myself and Rick decided we would try out and rate six of the “Top 10 Coffee Shops for 2010″ as listed by Cosy Coffee Shops. Seriously, the extent of our geekiness knows no bounds, and I even fashioned some small evaluation forms that we could fill in at each coffee shop and then fold up and stick right into our Moleskine notepads.

We had a good think about what criteria we would be using to assess coffee shops to go on these forms, it is very serious business as I am sure you can understand. The finalised forms included a section where we rated the coffee on a scale of 1-5 for qualities such as presentation, flavour, smoothness, price and if there were any accompaniments. The second section used the same scale to rate the place itself for qualities such as atmosphere, character and service. We also recorded what we ordered and there was room for additional comments.

Right, enough explaining, here is the good stuff, the results, with photographs of course. I will warn you now, this post is hefty, but do stick it out, I believe in you.

Coffee Aroma

Coffee Aroma in Lincoln is a place we frequent, which we are both very fond of, and is actually the reason we ended up finding the Cosy Coffee Shops website; so this seemed like a good place to start.

This place does seriously good coffee at reasonable prices. They use their own special blend from the roasters Has Bean Coffee. The staff are really friendly and you can tell they all take great pride in their work. We both often order a latte because they are so damn good from this place, and you get a glass of water as an accompaniment and it is served on a little wooden plate; a cheeky little bonus.

Failing that, all of the coffees they do are great, I am also told the hot chocolates are fantastic and I am pretty sure they do an array of different teas. Coffee Aroma opens late on Fridays and Saturdays (until 11.30pm) for all of those late night coffee cravings, and it is also worth mentioning, it is the only coffee shop we visited that sells alcohol too! I have never eaten here personally but Rick has a couple of times and he always looks entirely satisfied with the food.

The place itself is fairly small, so on a busy Saturday it can get a bit cramped if you just wanted a quiet drink. However, having said that, the main room upstairs has this amazing massive wooden table, a few small tables, and a smaller, cosy room which is very inviting. The art on the walls changes quite a lot, at the moment there is a wall devoted to postcards on which people who have visited have written their secrets and fears on, I find this really quirky and interesting.

In conclusion, Coffee Aroma is great, and if you are ever in Lincoln you should definitely drop in for coffee and lunch. If you have never been to Lincoln, go just so you can get a coffee here, it really is that good. Infact, after speculating on our coffee expeditions, myself and Rick have both concluded that Coffee Aroma is still one of our favourites, if not the favourite place of them all.

Opposite Café

Opposite Café in Leeds was the next place to get evaluated, but this time only by Rick as he was in Leeds for a web conference and I was in Derby being studious! So I am going to let him take over my blog post and write something short and share some photos.

Then we went to London…

LJ Coffee House

As soon as we got into Central London we headed straight for LJ Coffee House in Soho and ordered some coffee and some lunch.

The place was very welcoming from the off and the guy behind the counter was very, very friendly. Rick had a flat white and I opted for an Americano and we both had sandwich/panini’s for lunch which were absolutely delicious. The coffee bean this place used was Union Hand-Roasted, which at first I thought was going to be one of those poor tasting fair trade brands, but it was actually very nice coffee. My Americano was superb, strong but smooth and not bitter. Having looked at the Union Hand-Roasted website, it seems they are very passionate about the coffee they roast, and offer training to baristas who use their beans in coffee shops, and audit their machinery to make sure it is all in working order and does the coffee bean justice. You can actually purchase their coffee online for a reasonable price.

Back to LJ’s itself… as I said the guy who I thought to be the owner was very friendly. When he saw me and Rick taking photograph’s he started bringing over customers drinks for us to take photos before he actually gave the drinks to them. Very eager to show off his coffee artwork, and obviously taking lots of pride in his work!

The place was quite small, just one room, but the space had been used pretty well, with lots of comfy sofas packed in there. We noticed that in the corner there was a microwave, and a selection of cereals and porridge for the morning. Very cute. There is nothing much left to say for LJ’s, it is in Soho, it serves excellent coffee and great sandwiches, and you aren’t likely to feel uncomfortable or unwelcome at all.

Tina, We Salute You

On the Saturday morning we ventured all the way to Dalston to visit Tina, We Salute You, which is right at the top of the Cosy Coffee Shops list, and we were not disappointed. As soon as you walk in you get a sense that this place means business, not unlike the feeling you get when you walk into Coffee Aroma in Lincoln.

The coffee bean they use is Square Mile Coffee, who are also a London based coffee roaster who sell their beans online and to coffee shops. This coffee was amazing, I had a flat white and Rick a latte and we both agreed that it was full in flavour and our drinks were very smooth and creamy.

The food menu in Tina’s was quite extensive, and the bit that amazed me the most was the fact that they served crumpets. The main table in the shop had a selection of toppings for breakfast food, I liked this a lot. There were a lot of people sat around this table having breakfast, reading newspapers, typing on MacBook’s. It was a great atmosphere.

I didn’t eat but Rick had a sandwich which he claimed to be amazing. Another nice little touch was that there was bottled water near the counter with glasses that you could just go ahead and help yourself to.

According to the review on Cosy Coffee Shops, the decor in Tina, we salute you changes every 8 weeks. When we went in there was some art on the walls by Martina Ziewe which was intriguing to say the least.

All in all, Tina, we salute you impressed both of us a lot. Tucked away in the unlikely area of Dalston, which is not a nice place in all honesty, it is a fair distance from the tube stations and bus stops, but it is well worth the trek if you are in London and you want to visit an awesome coffee shop. I daresay it was my favourite of the London lot.

Monmouth Coffee Company

Next stop, Monmouth Coffee Company in Covent Garden. Last time we were in London we walked past this place just after having a coffee and saw the queue out of the door and made a mental note that we should try it.

The shop was incredibly full, and there was a queue for seats downstairs so we decided to get a take out and sit outside, on the curb, because the benches were full. Don’t get me wrong I am not saying that this makes this a bad place to get coffee because the lattes we had were one of the best lattes we have ever had. I mean, by this point it was getting pretty difficult to say what is better than what, we had consumed so much top quality coffee. But yes, this place has a good reputation and is obviously busy for a reason.

Monmouth is actually a coffee roaster too, so it is the Monmouth bean that you are drinking, which is roasted on site. There were a lot of staff working so you should never have to queue for long. Behind the counter where you order drinks there are loads of bags of coffee beans that you can buy in any desired amount, which is quite a nice feature. There was also a pretty decent selection of fresh baked goods. I had a cake. It was sexy.

Then there is a second counter where you retrieve your coffee. Didn’t even get a look at the seating downstairs but we were more than happy to get our paper cups and sit outside on the curb and watch the world go by. Covent Garden is such a busy part of London, and this coffee shop is perfect for it because the coffee is good enough to just get it on the go. A place like Tina, we salute you, where sitting in is part of the experience, would be wasted in Covent Garden, because it would be too busy all of the time and it would lose its relaxing atmosphere where any one can go in and feel comfortable.

Nude Espresso

Nude Espresso is just off Brick lane and first impressions included, “wow, lots of seating” and “this is where all the cool kids are”. This is the biggest one of the lot, with loads of seats, which is always good. Unfortunately the Grease soundtrack was playing, but I am sure (I hope), their music isn’t always that bad.

Again, coffee was great, perhaps not the best compared to Coffee Aroma, Tina, we salute you and Monmouth, but good nonetheless. I had a bit of blueberry cake and Rick had a chocolate brownie. Both were fantastic. Honestly I am running out of things to say, all of these places did great coffee, and the ones we had cake or food in did that well too. They each had their own different quirks that made them individual. For Nude Espresso it was its size, which meant that groups of people could socialise without getting in each others way, so everyone was minding their own business, which can be nice as opposed to the intimacy of smaller coffees shops.

Flat White.

That is all the coffee shops on the itinerary from the Cosy Coffee Shops list done, but we did visit one more in Soho upon recommendation.

We got drinks to go from this place, it felt very much like regular cliques frequented it and without sounding too harsh, it was the least welcoming of them all. That said the coffees were very reasonably priced and the staff were friendly.

I had a flat white (from flat white, ha), and Rick had a long black. We both agreed that the coffee had an odd flavour, not horrible, but sort of… fruity. I guess he could taste it more with his coffee, but my flat white was still very creamy. If I was walking past and needed coffee I’d go there, but LJ coffee house is just a five minute walk from Flat White, so given the choice I’d just go to LJ’s.

Nearly done now, I promise

This has been a very long post, if you have read it all you are a trooper, thank you. If you have read parts of it, or just looked at the photographs, thanks for looking too. I’d love to hear your thoughts? Will you ever go to any of these places? Or if you have been to any before, what did you think? I am guessing you probably think I am geeky beyond words but I am cool with that. I have had such fun prowling the streets of London, hopping between coffee shops and I am very happy that I can get to one of my favourites, Coffee Aroma, frequently. Obviously the whole thing has been made better by doing it with fellow geek/sociopath Rick Nunn of the Internet. Here is a picture of his face!

Peace out!