La Bottega Milanese, Bond Court

Posted on October 30, 2014 by Brian Williams

Bringing the best of Milanese espresso bar culture to Leeds might be one way of describing La Bottega Milanese. However you care to describe it though, there’s a distinctly modern, Italian feel to the new branch of La Bottega Milanese on Bond Court, which I was fortunate enough to visit back in June, a few weeks after it opened.

Compared to the intimate charm of, say, Laynes Espresso (before it’s expansion in 2017), or the brick-and-wood grandeur of Mrs Atha’s, La Bottega Milanese is a different kettle of fish entirely. It also doesn’t have a basement! On the other hand, few can boast a 26-seat communal table, which is clearly the pride and joy of owner, Alex, nor do they have the generous outside seating that Bond Court affords La Bottega Milanese.

La Bottega Milanese blends Italian espresso tradition with modern, third-wave roasting know-how to produce a really lovely cup of coffee courtesy of local roasters, Grumpy Mule (although La Bottega has now switched roasters to Dark Woods at the start of 2016). The food’s pretty decent too: in the morning, pastries and other breakfast goodies, replaced at lunch by sandwiches and salads, which in turn give way to cake in the afternoon. Finally, come evening, there are small plates, tapas and beer/wine. Truly a café for all occasions!

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Mrs Atha’s

Posted on October 23, 2014 by Brian Williams

On the pedestrianised Central Road, located, appropriately enough, right in the centre of Leeds, is the delightful Mrs Atha’s, perhaps one of the most complete coffee shops I’ve been to in ages. With a lovely interior, cosy little basement and small outside seating area, there’s plenty of seating options.

The coffee is provided by stalwarts Has Bean, with a house-blend, the charmingly-named “Mrs Atha’s Little Tipple”, on espresso and a single-origin on filter. There’s also a selection of single-origin filters from regularly-rotating guest roasters, quite often from Europe. Typically, I arrived the day before Mrs Atha’s new espresso machine, a Slayer no less, was due to be installed! Tea drinkers are also well catered for, with a wide selection of loose-leaf tea from Postcard Teas.

As good as the coffee (and tea) is, Mrs Atha’s is just as much about food, with a comprehensive all-day breakfast menu complimenting lunch and a selection of (very) specials, all of which are prepared in the basement kitchen. Add to that a wide range of extremely tempting cakes and you can’t really go wrong.

There is, by the way, a Mrs Atha: she’s the grandmother of the three brothers who own Mrs Atha’s.

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CRAFT London Coffee

Posted on October 20, 2014 by Brian Williams

CRAFT London is a new project by chef Stevie Parle and designer Tom Dixon. As the name suggests, it’s focused on the craft of making things. Located on the Greenwich Peninsular, a stone’s throw from both the O2 and North Greenwich tube station, it will ultimately be a café, restaurant and bar.

I visited it on Friday, five days after the café, occupying the ground floor, had opened, having been alerted to it by Robbie Calvert, who is café manager, head barista and (ultimately) roaster, all rolled into one. I had previously run into Robbie at Edinburgh’s Artisan Roast, where he’d impressed me with his passion (and his coffee).

I’d heard that he’d come down to London, so I was keen to find out what he was up to. As luck would have it, I was already going to the O2 that evening for a Caro Emerald concert, so snuck in just before closing time to catch up with Robbie and his new venture.

I have to say that I was impressed. Although CRAFT London had only been open for five days, it seemed to me to be a pretty decent operation with lots of exciting things in the pipeline!

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Fig + Sparrow

Posted on October 16, 2014 by Brian Williams

Just a block down the street from the mighty North Tea Power, and a few steps along Oldham Street from its junction with Church Street, is relative newcomer to Manchester’s coffee scene, Fig + Sparrow. Established in 2013, it’s half life-style shop, half café, but 100% excellent. Serving an espresso-based menu using beans from London’s Climpson and Sons, with guest filters on Aeropress and Chemex, plus loose-leaf tea from Newcastle’s Ringtons, Fig + Sparrow also does food. There’s a small but excellent range of cakes, an all-day breakfast menu, lunch, with various specials, sandwiches and a separate toast menu. You have to admire a place that has a separate toast menu.

The front half of the store is given over to the retail arm, selling gifts and various items for the home. The back half houses the coffee shop, with two rows of seating and the counter right at the back. It’s beautifully laid-out, uncluttered and spacious, with wooden floorboards and whitewashed walls and ceilings. Although not much natural light reaches the back, the high ceiling and multiple light bulbs make it surprisingly bright. The result is a very relaxed atmosphere, with quiet, easy-listening music in the background.

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Caffe Reggio

Posted on October 2, 2014 by Brian Williams

I’ve been visiting Caffe Reggio, a Greenwich Village institution, for years, almost as long as I’ve been coming to New York City. Like Boston’s Caffé Vittoria and Little Italy’s Caffé Roma, it’s the sort of old fashioned, American-Italian café that I can’t help but fall in love with (although I also have a soft spot for the Anglo-Italian variety). Established in 1927, Caffe Reggio been going strong ever since, trading partly on its heritage, although there’s a lot more behind its success than just nostalgia.

In terms of its coffee, it’s not going to win any third-wave aficionados over, but it serves a decent espresso, while there is an excellent range of cakes, which I’ve sampled before. Like many cafés of its ilk, there’s also a full food menu, which, due to illness, I didn’t get to try on this visit.

It’s a fairly small, busy space, with a sumptuously-appointed interior, which is half the attraction. You can also sit outside at a row of tables on the sidewalk. Full table service is an added bonus. It’s fair to say that while I enjoy the coffee, the main purpose of my (continued) visits is to soak up the atmosphere.

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Hot Numbers, Gwydir Street

Posted on September 22, 2014 by Brian Williams

I first visited Hot Numbers on Gwydir Street in the summer of 2014, when it was the one place that pretty much everyone recommended to me in Cambridge. These days, there’s much more competition, with the second Hot Numbers (the cafe/roastery on Trumpington Street), plus the likes of The Espresso Library, Urban Larder and Novi, but the original Hot Numbers still has plenty to offer.

Spread over two large rooms on the ground floor of the old Dake’s brewery, Hot Numbers is a café, single-origin roaster and music venue. The coffee is the main draw, Hot Numbers only serving single-origins, all roasted in-house at Trumpington Street. There’s a choice of two espresso beans (with milk and without), plus decaf and another single-origin on offer through Aeropress, Clever Dripper or Syphon. There’s also a decent range of loose-leaf tea.

If you’re not that obsessive about your coffee, it’s still a great place. To start with, the atmosphere is lovely and you can sit in either of the two rooms, which offer a variety of seating. The cakes, with offerings from local bakers such as Afternoon Tease and Fitzbillies, are amazing, and there are decent breakfast and lunch menus too.

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The Java Room

Posted on September 20, 2014 by Brian Williams

When I originally started the Coffee Spot, the intention was to write about places where I liked to have coffee. Although it’s evolved a lot since then, this original motivation is still very much at the heart of the Coffee Spot. On that basis, I present today’s Saturday Supplement, The Java Room. Located in a small plaza on Littleton Road in Chelmsford, you might be mistaken for thinking that this represents my first foray into Essex, but this happens to be Chelmsford, Massachusetts. Confusingly, the New England version of Chelmsford is in Middlesex County. Go figure, as my American friends would say.

The Java Room offers pretty standard coffee-shop fare. There are no flat whites and piccolos here, no single-origin beans or micro-lots, just large lattes, cappuccinos and espresso, along with bulk-brewed filter coffee and various iced and blended beverages. Where the Java Room really scores is in its atmosphere. It’s a lovely spot, the perfect, small town, neighbourhood coffee shop, friendly, relaxed and welcoming. I’m kicking myself for having been to Chelmsford many, many times and not discovering it before last year.

March 2015: Correction. I popped in one Monday in March (since I was literally passing by) and there are indeed flat whites to be had at The Java Room. Naturally, I had to have one and it was very fine.

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The Fleet Street Press

Posted on September 15, 2014 by Brian Williams

My visit to The Fleet Street Press was an exercise in going from the sublime to the ridiculous, since I had just come from the soaring, glorious space that is The Wren, to the small, intimate series of spaces that make up The Fleet Street Press. Really, the two of them are like chalk and cheese, representing the two extremes of coffee shop spaces, and yet I love them both.

The Fleet Street Press fills a fairly awkward, long, thin space at the start of Fleet Street, opposite the Royal Courts of Justice. Spread over two floors, the highlight is a cosy basement, stuffed with sofas and armchairs, although upstairs, with its bright, window seats, bar opposite the counter and intimate nook at the back, is pretty decent too.

Talking of decent, The Fleet Street Press serves a bespoke seasonal house-blend (The Press Blend) on the espresso machine, roasted by Caravan, plus regular guests and a daily-changing single-origin on filter. Add to that a wide range of loose-leaf tea from London Leaf and award-winning hot chocolate from Kokoa Collection and you’re onto a winner. And I’ve not even mentioned the wide range of cakes and the friendly staff…

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Spring Espresso

Posted on September 8, 2014 by Brian Williams

York is part of the not-very-well-known Yorkshire Coffee Triangle, along with Harrogate (home of the inestimable Bean & Bud) and Leeds (which featured in my latest article for Caffeine Magazine). This lack of recognition is a shame, since the area contains one of the greatest concentrations of high-quality coffee shops outside of London. Spring Espresso, on York’s Fossgate, is right up there with the best of them.

Like the other mainstays of York’s independent coffee scene, The Perky Peacock and Harlequin/The Attic, Spring Espresso is very much a home-grown talent. Opening in the autumn of 2011 (although with roots going back to 2006), Spring Espresso is the creation of the lovely Steve and Tracey, both of whom I was fortune enough to meet when I visited one Sunday morning.

There are two main reasons for visiting Spring Espresso: the excellent coffee from London’s Square Mile and the warm welcome you get from Tracey and Steve. The food’s not bad either (okay, so that’s three). And the cakes are excellent (four). And I’ve been told the tea’s very good too (five). I think I’ll stop now…

You get the picture…

December 2016: There are now two Spring Espressos, with the second opening on Lendal. Expect a write-up in 2017, just as soon as I get back to York!

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Loustic

Posted on September 4, 2014 by Brian Williams

I first became aware of Loustic after a tip-off from Fancy a Cuppa?, who I’d sent ahead to scout out Paris for me. It’s a lovely spot, tucked away on rue Chapon and, while not far from the Pompidou Centre, it’s off the regular tourist track.

Unashamedly blending French café culture with speciality coffee, Loustic is the brain-child of Channa, an ex-pat Brit, who has lived in Paris for the last 13 years. He seems to have managed it as well, with a customer split of about 70% locals to 30% tourists/ex-pats, a much higher ratio than several other Parisian speciality coffee places I’ve visited.

Loustic itself is long and thin, but a masterpiece of internal design, with a clever use of mirrors giving it a much bigger feel. At the same time, it’s split into three distinct seating areas, giving it a cosy, sometimes intimate, nature. The coffee is from Caffènation in Antwerp, while the tea is also very good (as vouched for by no lesser an expert than Mr Fancy a Cuppa himself). To round things off, there’s an interesting array of cakes and a selection of savoury tarts for when you need that little bit more.

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Category Archives: Cafes

La Bottega Milanese, Bond Court

Mrs Atha’s

CRAFT London Coffee

Fig + Sparrow

Caffe Reggio

Hot Numbers, Gwydir Street

The Java Room

The Fleet Street Press

Spring Espresso

Loustic