Four Corners Cafe

An espresso from Four Corners Cafe in a white cup with Four Corners Cafe Limited written on the inside of the rimLondon’s Lower Marsh is not the most appealing part of the capital. Even the name doesn’t conjure up particularly positive images. Lying behind Waterloo and not particularly on the way to anywhere, I’ve only recently become aware of it, despite Waterloo being my gateway to London for the past 15+ years. However, there it is and, in recent years, it has started to shed its poor image, becoming home to the likes of the Scooter Cafe and now, just across the road, to Four Corners Cafe.

Four Corners is, if you’ll excuse the pun, going places. Taking inspiration from the phrase “four corners of the world”, it’s a travel-themed Cafe, decorated with maps of the world and dotted with globes. Continuing the travel theme, its neat loyalty card is in the form of a miniature passport.

Not that this counts for much if the coffee is poor, but thankfully it’s not. As well as a decent coffee menu, powered by London Roasters, Ozone, Four Corners offers loose-leaf tea from Yumchaa and a small range of toasted sandwiches and pastries to die for (according to fellow coffee-blogger, Kate, aka A Southern Belle in London) from a bakers just around the corner.

April 2014: Four Corners won “Best Use of Social Media” the inaugural London Coffee Stops Awards!

August 2020: Four Corners has reopened, offering takeaway service only, although there is limited outside seating. You can see what I made of it when I visited later that month.

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Yorks Bakery Cafe, Newhall Street

The Yorks Bakery Cafe logo: does what it says on the board.A short walk north of Birmingham’s New Street Station (its website says seven minutes, I reckon I can do it in five, even if it’s all uphill) and even closer to Snow Hill Station, Yorks Bakery Cafe has just about everything you could want: fantastic coffee from espresso machine or brew bar, including cold brew, a choice of 16 teas, a brunch menu served until four o’clock, loads of fabulous cakes…

Pause for breath…

… a wide range of seating, in three different areas, free wifi, friendly, helpful staff (who even arranged for the sun to come out for my visit).. The list goes on. If you’re not convinced by now, I’m not sure you ever will be, but just in case…

The coffee is from London roasters, Caravan, which is consistently turning out coffee I like, and Yorks is up there with the best of them when it comes to making great coffee. There’s a comprehensive range of espresso-based drinks, but the real sign of excellence is the brew bar which offers V60 pour-over or Aeropress for one and Chemex or Cafetiere to share. There’s a choice of three beans at the brew bar and a seasonal single-origin espresso bean.

February 2016: Newhall Street has now closed, the building undergoing a major refurbishment. As a result, the mantle of Yorks Bakery Cafe has passed to the new cafe/roastery on Stephenson Street, which is even closer to New Street Station.

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@the Well

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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Ninth Street Espresso (9th & 10th St)

The window of Ninth Street Espresso, disconcertingly on 10th Street and Tompkins SquareNinth Street Espresso has been around since 2001, making it something of an established player in New York’s speciality coffee market compared to newcomers such as Pushcart Coffee where I’d started my day.  I tried two branches, the original on 9th Street in Alphabet City and the East Village branch just two blocks away on 10th Street/Tompkins Square.

In theory I should have liked Tompkins Square as much as I liked 9th Street. However, I didn’t. On such small things hang the status of a Coffee Spot, although in fairness to Tompkins Square, the reasons I didn’t get on with it were very much specific to that visit.

In both branches, the focus is firmly on the coffee, which is excellent, while what’s on offer is very typical for an American coffee shop. Although Tompkins Square has seating, it’s set up more for takeaway trade, while 9th Street is much more the place to linger for an hour or two. They’re a little off the beaten (tourist) track in the East Village/Alphabet City area, but if you happen to be in the vicinity, both branches are worth visiting.

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FreeState Coffee

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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Gasoline Alley Coffee

The Gasoline Alley Logo, crossed-espresso basketsNew York City’s Gasoline Alley is a curious place. It could easily BE an alley, providing a cut across between Lafayette and Mulberry streets, on which some enterprising soul has put doors at either end and a roof on top to turn it into a coffee shop. Disappointingly, it’s not, but the feeling that you are sitting in an alley is hard to shake.

What made Gasoline Alley for me was the coffee; it serves Intelligentsia, a brand which I’m familiar with from my many visits to Chicago and one which I really like. Of course, great beans don’t guarantee great coffee, but in Gasoline Alley’s case, the baristas use their La Marzocco espresso machine to get the very best out of Intelligentsia’s Black Cat seasonal espresso blend.

Gasoline Alley is part of the growing trend of coffee shops with strong links to cycling. It proudly announces this with a racing bike hanging above the counter and, as if to confirm the link, the Arc Racing Team stopped by for coffee while I was there, adding a certain frisson of excitement!

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The Press Room, Surbiton

An excellent double-shot Cortado from The Press RoomSurbiton’s The Press Room is the sort of place every town should have. Serving Has Bean coffee (we’ll get to that later) as part of an extremely comprehensive range of espresso-based drinks (I counted 12, not including Chai Latte and Hot Chocolate, both of which were on the menu under “Coffee”) and boasting 21 Terrific Teas (the menu neglects to say how many mediocre teas are served, but I suspect that the number is zero), the Press Room has something for everyone. If coffee and tea aren’t your thing then there are almost as many cold drinks, as well as wine, champagne and speciality beer. And cake. And toasted sandwiches.

Add to that, the Press Room is a lovely space to sit and consume these things. It’s a friendly, lively place, bright and spacious, with some very accommodating, happy staff. There’s a bar by the fully-retractable front windows, tables outside (on an admittedly busy/noisy street) and a generous provision of tables inside. The background music is unobtrusive and, in keeping with the name, there’s a supply of magazines that you can sit and read.

Oh yes, and The Press Room is one year old today (11th July 2013). Happy Birthday!

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South End Buttery

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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Toi Moi & Café

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!

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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