Category Archives: Cafes

Coffee Spots which also offer food

Waterloo Tea

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A teapot brewing at Waterloo tea with dual egg timers (one orange, one green; what tea you have determines which one you use)Whisper it quietly, but I quite like Waterloo Tea, or the Waterloo Gardens Teahouse to give it its full name. No, seriously. Despite the obvious flaw (tea), it’s wonderful. It’s a bit of a trek from city centre Cardiff, but well worth the walk (or bus ride).

It’s in a lovely setting in a parade of shops, opposite a small park, and occupies what feels like an old shop. The space isn’t best suited to a café, resulting in a rather interesting layout. However, the atmosphere’s very welcoming and, if you can’t grab the sofa opposite the counter, go for one of the (very popular) window tables.

Waterloo Tea is passionate about its tea. The good news is it’s equally passionate about its coffee, taking as much care and attention over preparing the perfect cup as any speciality coffee shop I’ve seen. Honestly, I can only applaud, since speciality tea shops which takes this level of care (even for tea) are few and far between. The equally good news is that it seems to take just as much care over its cake as it does over the tea and coffee. Frankly, with a philosophy like that, you can’t go wrong!

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@the Well

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Three delightfully-sized pancakes at @theWell, along with a generous helping of maple syrup.@the Well is an intriguing concept: a laundrette, café and internet café all-in-one. I can’t comment on the laundrette part, but as a café, I love it. It seems a genius idea though: why not have a coffee or surf the net while you wait for your washing? @the Well is a family affair, run by three sisters, who confessed to starting it mainly as a café. Now, however, it’s used just as much as a laundrette.

Set back off Bristol’s busy Cheltenham Road, @the Well faces east, catching the morning sun. It’s got a small courtyard out front with a small table, although given the traffic, I’m not sure I’d want to sit outside. However, it does provide some shelter. Inside, it is bright, airy and welcoming, one of the nicest spaces I’ve been to in a long time.

@the Well has a limited menu and similarly limited range of coffee, so it might not be for everyone. Fortunately for me, it caters exactly to my tastes, with cafetieres of coffee and American-style pancakes. It’s also very laptop friendly, with free wifi and plenty of power outlets. On my visit, everyone was using either a laptop or a tablet!

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Hart’s Bakery

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Hart's Bakery, in one of the arches under the Approach Road to Bristol Temple Meads StationHart’s Bakery has rapidly established itself as synonymous with good cake, at least in Bristol’s speciality coffee circles, where it supplies many of my favourite Coffee Spots. What I hadn’t realised, until I visited it myself, is that it’s also a fantastic little coffee spot in its own right, serving its own amazing cakes, soup, toasties and pasties, along with great coffee from local roasters, Extract.

Another advantage is that it’s right outside Bristol’s Temple Meads Station, which is good news for coffee lovers since that area is not awash with great coffee. It’s an interesting space: located under an arch of Station Approach, the ramp leading up to Temple Meads, it has the feel of a large air raid shelter, probably due to the corrugated metal ceiling that lines the presumably brick underside of the arch.

The staff were very friendly, greeting everyone with a cheery hello as they come in. Sometimes you don’t want that, but entering such a large and open space, it makes you feel very welcome. Head baker, Laura [Hart], serves as well as baking, which all adds to the atmosphere, giving it a very communal feel.

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Bar des Arts New Coffee Menu

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Bar des Arts shiny new brew bar, complete with ceramic filters.Last Saturday, I had the pleasure of attending the launch of the new coffee menu at my favourite Guildford Coffee Spot, Bar des Arts. If you’ve been following the Coffee Spot, you’ll know that this has been the result of lots of careful planning by Sara and her team, in consultation with new roasters, Horsham Coffee Roasters.

I’ve been along for the ride, offering my opinions (at Sara’s request, I hasten to add!), sticking my camera in at inopportune moments and generally documenting the whole process. So it was great to be able to go along on Saturday morning for the start of what will hopefully be a new era, not just for Bar des Arts, but for the whole Guildford coffee scene.

October 2015: Sadly Bar des Arts closed at the start of the month. I’m not sure what, if anything, will take its place.

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FreeState Coffee

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The A-board outside FreeState Coffee: Espresso Bar, Brew Bar, Breakfast, Lunch, Cakes & SweetsFreeState Coffee has entered the fray as yet another excellent London Coffee Spot competing for my attention in the vicinity of the British Museum. It doesn’t help that the museum now has a lovely Members’ Room serving some excellent Italian espresso. And I’m a member…

However, FreeState is making a strong claim for my business. Open for just four months, it’s already made its mark. As well as serving excellent coffee, the owner, Tom, has recruited some wonderful staff. Anita and Chris, who were on during my second visit, are as passionate about their coffee, and as dedicated to giving you great customer service, as any I’ve had the good fortune to meet.

Tom has also created a fantastic space for drinking coffee. Although it looks like FreeState has been furnished from a clearance sale, at second glance it’s clear that an awful lot of thought has gone into both the furnishing and the layout. The provision of a separate brew bar, at the back of the main seating area, is a nice touch, while the wooden floorboards, furniture and counters (the latter made from wood reclaimed 1920s boxcars) combine with the plain walls to create a harmonious whole.

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Attendant Fitzrovia

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The entrance to Attendant, in an old men's public lavatory on London's Foley Street.I’ve been to all sorts of coffee spots, in all sorts of places, but I don’t think that I’ve ever been anywhere quite as innovative when it comes the setting as Attendant. As the name hints, Attendant is in a (disused) Victorian (men’s) public lavatory on London’s Foley Street. If that sounds weird, it is, and yet it’s also genius.

The great thing about Attendant is that it’s kept most of the original fittings, incorporating them into the design. The result is a quirky, unique place. For some, that would have been enough, relying on the gimmick alone to draw in the punters. Not, however, Attendant, which has aimed firmly for the top of the speciality coffee market, going with local roasters Caravan, from up the road at Kings Cross. It also offers a wide range of sandwiches and cakes, again with an emphasis on quality and local produce.

Attendant is pretty small and, when I was there, it was very busy. However, a high staff-to-customer ratio, with a minimum three staff on duty during my visit, meant that everything was handled very smoothly. Ironically, for a café in an ex-public lavatory, there’s no toilet!

July 2020: Attendant has reopened, offering sit-in and takeaway services. You can see what I made of it when I visited.

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South End Buttery

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My cup of coffee surveys the bar at the back of the South End ButteryBoston’s South End Buttery is an excellent bakery/café that, until this visit, I had tabbed exclusively as a breakfast spot. Its breakfast offerings aren’t as extensive as some other establishments; mostly egg sandwiches on biscuit (American, not British) or bagel, with hot oatmeal as an alternative. I usually opt for the egg sandwich on a biscuit which never fails to satisfy while leaving space for lunch and dinner later in the day!

If you come for lunch there’s the usual range of sandwiches prepared while you wait and some tasty pastries to tempt you throughout the day. The South End Buttery changes a little in the evenings and at the weekends. Brunch is served on Saturdays and Sundays from 10:00 to 15:00, while the bar (see below) turns into restaurant from 17:30 onwards, staying open until 22:00 (23:00 Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays).

Since I’ve only ever been there on weekday mornings I can’t really comment on the merits or otherwise of it as a dinner/brunch spot. One day I’ll visit on the weekend and let you know!

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Berkeley Perk Café

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The Berkeley Perk Cafe logo on a flag hanging outside the shopThe Berkley Perk Café is a well-established and well-loved coffee shop in Boston’s South End, having been around for 15 years. It offers a typical American-style coffee shop menu, with the usual espresso-based drinks, the obligatory flasks of filter coffee and a sideline in iced coffee. It has a small but tasty range of cakes and cookies, a decent breakfast menu of omelettes, bagels and egg sandwiches and an extensive range of reasonably-priced sandwiches for lunch.

In conversation with the owner I learned that the inspiration had been a trip to London 15 years ago, which led to a desire to create something with a different look-and-feel than the run-of-the-mill American coffee shop. Whatever the inspiration, the end result is a wonderful place, the lovely atmosphere making it close to the perfect place to drink coffee. Quiet but busy, with friendly but not intrusive staff and a bright and warm interior to draw you in, the Perk is the sort of place you could spend an entire afternoon and leave wandering where the time had gone.

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Toi Moi & Café

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Toi, Moi & Cafe | Cafe TorrefacteurToi Moi & Café (“You, me and coffee” for those who don’t speak French) is a micro-roaster with its own café, located conveniently just around the corner from my friend Adam’s apartment, where I was staying in Montréal. It’s the last of the Coffee Spots from the visit I made to Montréal back in March and rounds off an excellent visit. I came to Montréal with no expectations and left having found a wonderful coffee scene, with a wide variety of places.

Toi Moi & Café doesn’t fit the bill of the third-wave coffee shop: as well as serving coffee, which it roasts itself, it’s also an excellent breakfast, lunch and dinner spot in a residential part of Montréal. And it has lots of cake. In short, it does pretty much everything, and, being around the corner from Adam’s, I found myself a fairly regular visitor, heading there for both breakfast and lunch, as well as coffee and cake!

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Résonance!

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A fine vegan cortado from Résonance, the milk being a blend of almond and coconutOne of the great things about my (now not so) recent trip to Montréal is the variety of the places that I visited. They all serve excellent coffee, but that’s about all they have in common. Take Résonance, another of the recommendations I got from Marie-Ève of Pikolo Espresso Bar. Down in a basement, it’s in what I’d call an “interesting” part of Avenue du Parc (about 12 blocks up from Pikolo). Café by day, jazz bar by night, it serves a full range of vegan food, one of the few coffee spots in Montréal not to focus exclusively on coffee.

Résonance, supplied by Toronto-based Pilot Coffee Roasters, offers as wide a variety of coffee as any place I’d been on my trip. Along with the usual espresso-based drinks, pour-over and cafetiere coffee was also on offer, plus decaf options (essential, I would have thought, for somewhere that says open until midnight!). It was also one of the more spacious coffee spots I’d visited, roughly the same size as Café Olimpico but with a very different atmosphere, which changed as the evening wore on, the focus subtly shifting from coffee to jazz.

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