Category Archives: Closed

Coffee Spots which have sadly closed since I visited them! Fortunately this is not a large list!

Black Market

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Black Market, proudly serving coffee from Parisian roasters, Coutume.Black Market is probably my favourite of the third-wave coffee places that I visited in my recent (and far too short) trip to Paris. It effortless marries third-wave coffee with the look and feel of a traditional French bar/café in the streets of the 18th Arrondissement. After my recent rant about attitudes to Parisian coffee, it’s good to see somewhere combining new and old so well.

The coffee, from Parisian roasters Coutume, is made with as much love and care as any I’ve seen and the menu is commendably short, with just espresso, café long (espresso with hot water; think Americano/long black), noisette (espresso with a small amount of milk; think cortado/machiatto) and café au lait (espresso with more milk; think small cappuccino/flat white).

The interior is similarly uncomplicated, with wooden furniture blended with plain walls and a tiled floor. I really enjoyed it, although some might find the music annoying. Although mellow, it was quite loud when I was there. On the other hand, apart from the barista, I had the place to myself for a large part of my stay, so it added something to the atmosphere and didn’t feel that intrusive.

February 2014: Sadly Black Market has closed, which is a real shame. However, the owners, Youssef & Baptiste, have now opened Fragments, Paris, their new venture in the La Marais.

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Flat Caps Coffee

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Perhaps the nicest cup of filter coffee I've ever had from Flat Caps Coffee in Newcastle, served with the filter in place.Flat Caps Coffee is arguably the hardest-to-find place in my Coffee Spot career. On the other hand, since everyone I asked said that I had to go there, clearly it couldn’t be that hard to find… So, undaunted, I set out with nothing more than my nose for coffee and Google Maps to guide me. This proved to be one of those rare occasions when Google Maps won out…

Flat Caps is downstairs under a gift shop, with the smallest sign in the world providing the only external indication of its existence. It’s a fair bet that Flat Caps doesn’t pick up much passing trade, so its popularity must be down to word of mouth and reputation, which tells me that it must be pretty good. Now I’ve been there, I can tell you that it’s excellent.

Run by Joe, a Finalist in this year’s UK Barista Championships, Flat Caps serves amazing coffee in relaxing, laid-back surroundings. Big tables are mixed with intimate niches, while the blue & white tiled floor, low ceiling, green walls and exposed brickwork go surprisingly well together (although it’s since been redecorated). As a space in which to drink coffee, it’s every bit as good as the coffee itself.

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Didn’t You Do Well

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Didn't You Do Well's A-board outside the coffee shop on Park RowYou could argue that Bristol is in the middle of a golden age of coffee, putting it up there with the likes of Edinburgh. In the last nine months, four top-notch coffee shops, as good as any in the country, have opened. Each offers something different, but all share a passion for great coffee. Three of them, Wild at Heart, Small Street Espresso and Full Court Press, form a triangle in the centre of the old medieval city. Didn’t You Do Well is an outpost on Park Row, offering a specialist alternative to the grand-daddy of the Bristol coffee scene, the Boston Tea Party, just around the corner on Park Street.

Didn’t You Do Well nails its colours firmly to the speciality coffee mast with some unusual brewing technology (at least for the UK). It offers a choice of beans and a fairly severe outlook on how you take your coffee. This goes with a clean, uncluttered look which seems to minimise any distraction from the coffee itself. While others, such as Wild at Heart, might go for quirky surroundings, the quirkiness at Didn’t You Do Well stops with the name: everything else is focused squarely on the coffee!

March 2015: Sad news… Didn’t You Do Well closed at the end of the month after two years of bringing great coffee to Bristol. Good luck to Will and Ally in whatever they do next.

October 2015: Will is now working full-time as a barista in Full Court Press.

You can read more of my thoughts after the gallery.

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Gimme! Coffee, Mott Street

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An espresso in a proper gimme! coffee cup, on the bench outside the Mott Street branch.Gimme! Coffee is both a roaster and a regional coffee shop chain with four branches in upstate New York, two in Brooklyn and the solitary branch in Manhattan on Mott Street. It’s been around since 2000, while the Manhattan outlet opened in 2008, making Gimme! Coffee a comparatively long-established player in the New York coffee scene (unless you compare it to somewhere like Caffé Roma!).

The Manhattan branch is essentially a takeaway place, although I got lucky with the weather and had a chance to sit outside while savouring my espresso. At a pinch, you could stand inside and drink your coffee, but when I tried that (while chatting to the staff) I found that I was constantly getting in the way of other customers.

For somewhere so small, Gimme! Coffee packs a lot in though, including bags of charm and character. As a result, instead of just being somewhere to grab a coffee to go, it’s established itself as a real asset to the neighbourhood. It’s the sort of place I’d make a point of going to if I lived in the area, even if it was only for a couple of minutes a day.

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Café Plume

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Cafe Plume on Avenue Mont-Royal OuestIt’s fair to say that I was blown away by the coffee scene in Montréal. I came to it armed with precisely zero foreknowledge and left deeply impressed with the range and quality of the coffee spots dotted around the city. Café Plume is another of the new crop of places which have bloomed in the last 18 months or so. It was recommended to me by Marie- Ève of the Pikolo Espresso Bar and her recommendation proved to be spot on.

Café Plume is best described as a neighbour café. Located on the eastern edge of the plateau area of Montréal, opposite Parc Jeanne-Mance, it’s a laid-back, relaxed and friendly place with coffee that’s every bit as good as its setting. Throw in a generous provision of power outlets and free wifi and you have the sort of place that makes you want to move in next door (or, in the case of Café Plume, move into one of the flats above the shop). Or maybe just move into Plume itself! Continue reading →

I Am Coffee

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The I Am Coffee logo on St Mark's Place, New York CityNormally I do my research when trying a Coffee Spot for the first time, but every so often I walk past somewhere and that’s enough for me. So it was with I Am Coffee: I was actually en-route to another Coffee Spot when I saw it while walking down St Mark’s Place (in case you’re wondering, St Mark’s Place is what E 8thSt is called for the three blocks between 3rd Avenue and Tompkins Square; I thought only us Brits did that with our street names!).

The first thing to catch my eye was the sign: calling your coffee shop “I Am Coffee” is enough to get my attention any day. It’s a bit of a challenge, really. Choosing “I Am Coffee” means you either have a hell of a lot of front, or you really know about coffee. Fortunately, Giovanni, the man behind I Am Coffee, knows about coffee. I mean, he REALLY knows about coffee.

Standing in I Am Coffee and talking with Giovanni was the coffee highlight of my time in NYC on the recent trip and that’s not counting the coffee, or the place itself. It’s a must visit!

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TAP, 114 Tottenham Court Road

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The famous TAP bicycle above the door at the No. 114 branch on Tottenham Court RoadTAP, or Tapped and Packed as was, is a chain of three coffee shops (now four) in central London. The Tottenham Court Road branch was the first one I tried: I was there in February and again in April. Although TAP was packed (pun intended) and busy both times, I found it a lovely place to sit and chill for a while. I like its look and feel and love many of the little touches, such as the re-use of Black Treacle tins for sugar and jam jars for water. Milk for your filter coffee comes in dinky little glass flasks. Such small things please me.

TAP’s reputation is built on its coffee, particularly its single-origin beans which are rotated on a regular basis (perversely I had espresso; I know, I confuse myself at times). It also does a range of food and cake. Bizarrely, since I was there late on a Wednesday evening for my first visit when all the food was gone, I was told off by the staff and made to promise to come back at lunch time (which I did) so that I could see what else was on offer. You have to admire such passionate employees!

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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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Guerra Coffee, Guildford

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Guerra Coffee's first pop-up is in Guildford, on Friary Street, just at the bottom of the High StreetGuildford has a pop-up espresso bar! How exciting is that? For some reason, I associate pop-up espresso bars (or pop-up anything) with places such as London, Edinburgh or Bristol, not my home town of Guildford, so I, for one, was very excited.

Guerra Coffee has only been going for a few weeks, having sneakily waited until I was out of the country before opening. For those unfamiliar with the pop-up movement, the idea is to occupy unused space, often on a temporary basis. In that vein, Guerra Coffee shares space with the Limelight Portrait Studios on Friary Street, just off the bottom of Guildford’s High Street. However, I get the impression that Guerra would like to be more permanent than the typical pop-up.

Guerra’s focus is firmly on the coffee, with a mission to bring great coffee to a variety of locations (see the Guerra website for more details). It’s great to see Guerra opening up in Guildford, but whether Guildford is equally passionate about good coffee remains to be seen…

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Le Couteau – The Knife

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A Jimma Tencho & Welinso (an Ethiopian bean) made with the BrewT system at Le Couteau, Montreal.You know somewhere is going to be good when everybody you meet tells you to go there. So it was with Le Couteau (The Knife), one of the new wave of coffee shops that have sprung up in Montréal in the last couple of years. In fact, as this post is published, Le Couteau is precisely one year and six days old…

Located just around the corner from the Mont-Royal metro station, Le Couteau is a wonderful place. It’s spacious, full of light and the coffee is superb. The cakes are pretty awesome too. Like many of the places I visited in Montréal, the focus is firmly on the coffee, with little else to distract you, although there is tea and hot chocolate for those of that persuasion.

At first glance, the wooden benches don’t look that inviting, but they are actually very comfortable, while the much sought-after window seats look ideal (I never got to try one since they were all taken). At the risk of sounding like a broken record, if I lived in Montréal, I’d be in here all the time (except I’d be in all other great places I visited as well; something of a dilemma!).

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