Category Archives: Restaurants

Coffee Spots offering sit-down meals throughout the day, evenings included.

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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Café de Flore

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Classic Cafe de Flore cup, with green writing on white china, from 2009.Café de Flore is a grand café in the old style, which, together with near neighbour Les Deux Magots, is a fixture of Paris’ Left Bank. Situated on the Boulevard Saint-Germain, Café de Flore dates back to 1885 and provides a taste of café life from early to mid-20th Century Paris. Popular with tourists and locals alike, it is, for me, part of something quintessentially Parisian, the stereo-typical grand café par excellence. Fortunately for me, Café de Flore actually lives up to my (potentially exaggerated) expectations.

The coffee is good and there’s a range of food from breakfast through lunch to dinner, along with a range of pastries. If coffee’s not your thing, there’s tea, hot chocolate, soft drinks and a very impressive array of drinks from the bar, including a whole page on the menu dedicated to champagne (this is, after all, France). The only potential downside is the price: for a city with a reputation for being on the expensive side, expect to pay twice as much in Café de Flore as you would elsewhere in Paris. Of course, you’re paying for the experience and that little touch of class, which, for me, is well worth it!

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Foxcroft & Ginger

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Foxcroft & Ginger's rhubarb and custard muffin, with a slice removed to reveal the liquid custard in the centre.What’s there not to like about Foxcroft & Ginger? I was introduced to it by a friend on Twitter and, although it took me a little while, it’s now become a firm favourite. The storefront, on Berwick Street in Soho, is, I confess, one I could easily walk past (and it’s not often that my café radar lets me down) and I find the upstairs a little chaotic. However, downstairs in the basement is the real deal.

Regular readers might not know about my fondness for basements, largely because there aren’t that many cafés with decent basements. It can best be described as “unfinished”, with bare walls and exposed power conduits and air conditioning ducts. It’s “L” shaped with a collection of oddly-shaped tables around the walls. In fact, nothing much matches in Foxcroft & Ginger, which is one of its many charms.

The coffee, as one might expect, is very good, with espresso-based drinks supplemented by V60, cafetiere and Aeropress options and with beans from Has Bean and Caravan. However, best of all are the cakes, and, specifically, the muffins, which might be the best in the whole wide world, all freshly baked on site.

September 2016: I’ve heard on the grapevine that Foxcroft & Ginger’s Soho branch has closed, although there’s no official word as to why… Very sad news.

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Champagne Central

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If you’re looking for somewhere to spend that odd hour while you’re waiting for your train at Glasgow Central station, then look no further than Champagne Central (although it now has competition from the likes of Riverhill Coffee Bar). Part of the recently-renovated Grand Central Hotel, Champagne Central offers you a chance to surround yourself in opulence while you wait for your train. The coffee’s okay, but frankly, who cares when you are in such wonderful surroundings and overlooking the station concourse so you can keep an eye on the departures board? Not me, at least.

Champagne Central is more than just a posh waiting room though. It serves food, afternoon tea and has a fully-stocked bar, so any time you are looking for a touch of elegance, give Champagne Central a try. And don’t worry, you don’t have to sit overlooking the station concourse if you don’t want to!

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