Category Archives: Laptop Friendly

Coffee Spots with power, free wifi and/or a tolerant attitude to us laptop users.

The Press Room, Surbiton

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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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Southsea Coffee Co

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The Southsea Coffee Co logo.Southsea Coffee Co is one of those places which you catch sight of from across the street and think “I’m going to enjoy this”. I was actually looking for it, having wanted to visit since it first opened eight weeks ago, but I suspect that had I just been walking down the street, I would have crossed over and gone in.

Wife-and-husband team, Tara and Martyn, have put a lot of thought and effort into their new coffee shop and it shows. The layout and decor is wonderful, the atmosphere perfect, the staff warm and friendly and, to cap it all, the coffee’s great! It’s not huge, but feels spacious and uncluttered, helped by the tall ceilings. However, it’s going to get even bigger over the summer when the back yard, which is currently undergoing renovation, is opened to the public.

Southsea Coffee Co quite rightly makes a big thing about its local links, with milk from nearby Hayling Island and bread from West Wittering’s Bread a la Mer. As much as possible, it’s about supporting other local, independent businesses. In fact, the least local element is probably the coffee, which comes all the way from Has Bean in Staffordshire!

January 2018: I’ve finally made it back to Southsea Coffee Co. These days, Southsea uses London’s Campbell & Syme on espresso with various roasters appearing on the pour-over menu. There’s also excellent breakfast (until 11:30), lunch (11:30 to 15:30) and all-day (until 15:30) menus, but other than the back garden having opened, very little has changed. Most important of all, it still has the same warm, welcoming atmosphere.

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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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9Bar Coffee

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9Bar Coffee, complete with perky coffee bean...Newcastle’s 9Bar serves excellent coffee and world-class cheese toasties. In that respect, it reminds me of Montréal’s Le Lapin Pressé although that’s where the similarity both starts and ends. While Le Lapin Pressé, contrary to its name, is almost as laid back as Flat Caps Coffee, 9Bar is at the opposite end of the scale.

The walls are plastered with the four characters “9Bar” repeated over and over again, interspersed with slogans such as “The pressure is good for you | 9Bar coffee” (if you’ve not worked it out yet, espresso is made by forcing hot water through the ground beans at nine bars of pressure). This, coupled with the really loud music (loud enough for several other people to comment on how loud it was…), make for a pumped up atmosphere which I found really enjoyable (much to my own surprise). However, if that’s not to your taste, there are seats outside, plus a large outdoor seating area on the broad pavement of the pedestrianised Grey Street, right next to the Theatre Royal.

As well as coffee and toasties, 9Bar has other food options, a good selection of cake, tea, soft drinks, beer and wine by the glass.

August 2015: I had heard rumours that 9Bar had closed, but on my latest trip to Newcastle, I popped by and it has indeed gone, with no evidence that it was ever there, which is a real shame.

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Le Lapin Pressé

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Le Lapin Pressé, café + grillcheeserie.Montréal is experiencing a coffee boom: several of the Coffee Spots I visited during my brief stay had opened within the last 18 months. Not Le Lapin Pressé, though: by the time you read this, it will have celebrated its fourth birthday, making it one of the more established players on the scene. However, like many of my Montréal Coffee Spots, it came highly recommended. Starting with Jovan the Poet, who button-holed me in Café Myriade to tell me that I must go there, Le Lapin Pressé kept turning up in people’s lists of places I had to go. So, naturally, I went.

As well as its reputation for excellent coffee, Le Lapin Pressé is also known for its grilled-cheese sandwiches. Having tried both, I can confirm that the reputation is well earned: indeed, that’s pretty much all Le Lapin Pressé does. Well, that and tea/soft drinks for those who don’t like coffee, and salad/soup to go with the sandwiches. But really, in the grand scheme of things, it’s very firmly focused on coffee and toasted sandwiches and I admire somewhere that knows what it’s doing and pursues excellence in it to the exclusion of everything else.

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Full Court Press

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A cup of filter coffee from Full Court PressThe latest in the recent explosion of speciality coffee shops in Bristol, Full Court Press, or FCP Coffee, burst onto the scene on 1st May. I gave it a day to settle down and then went in to see what all the fuss was about.

Bristol has a number of top-notch coffee shops that would grace any city in the country and FCP has leapt right in there with them. Reminiscent of (the sadly now closed) Didn’t You Do Well in both decor and coffee attitude, owner Mat has created something special here. From the moment you walk through the door, you know you are going to get some special coffee. Two white boards on the walls behind the large counter list the four beans available, along with tasting notes and preparation methods. Unusually, FCP has no preferred roaster, and while that may change when things settle down, currently each of the four beans is from different roasters and regularly change.

While I was there, Chris, from Small Street Espresso came in and while he sat at the back chatting with Mat, barista Dave gave me a tour of the premises and a quick demonstration of the art of making coffee (see the gallery).

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Ten Belles

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The Ten Belles Coffee MugTen Belles, just off the Canal St Martin, in a lovely part of the city, is a fairly recent addition to the Paris coffee scene, having opened in September 2012. However, serving Has Bean coffee in distinctly British/North American surroundings, it is most definitely not a traditional Parisian café. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, just don’t come here expecting table service, stuffy waiters and café crème: Ten Belles wouldn’t be out of place in the heart of London or New York.

A small place, with a clever mezzanine section above the kitchen to provide additional space, Ten Belles is proving a hit with the ex-pat crowd judging by the amount of English spoken and the accents on display during my visit.

Ten Belles has a commendably limited (and typical for Paris) espresso range: espresso, melangé (with hot water; close to a long black/Americano), noisette (with steamed milk; close to a macchiato or cortardo) and cappuccino. All come as double shots, the size determined by the drink. There’s also Aeropress and Chemex options, filter coffee, tea, hot chocolate (all in really nice Ten Belles mugs) and Luscombe soft drinks to reinforce the British link.

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Coffee Barker

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The Coffee Barker sign, written on one of the windows.It’s been many years since I was last in Cardiff and I’ve certainly never been there in my guise as a consumer of fine coffee. So, I was interested to see what the capital of the country of my birth had to offer and I’m pleased to say that I wasn’t disappointed. Leading the way, in rival arcades in the city centre, are two very different places, today’s Coffee Spot, Coffee Barker, and The Plan Café.

You’ll find Coffee Barker in the beautiful Victorian Castle Arcade. It has fiercely loyal customers: you know you are onto something good when you are interrupted in your chat with the baristas to be told, unprompted, by one of the customers: “best coffee in Cardiff”. Concise and to the point.

Whether it is the best coffee in Cardiff is up for debate. Certainly third-wave coffee purists will prefer The Plan, but if what you want  (like me) is a no-nonsense espresso or a bucketful of cappuccino (not me!), then the delightful surroundings of Coffee Barker should put it top of your list. There’s also lots of cake and sandwiches if you’re feeling hungry.

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Café Olimpico

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Café Olimpico, depuis 1970 (since 1970)Make no mistake, even though this is Montréal and its staff switch effortlessly between French and English, Café Olimpico is Italian to its roots. Compared to some Italian places I visited on my North American trip, it’s a relative newcomer, having “only” been around since 1970, when it was founded by the late Rocco Furfaro (it’s now owned by Rocco’s daughters, Rossana and Victoria).

It’s best described as a neighbourhood espresso bar. Located on the corner of Rue St-Viateur and Rue Waverley, right in the heart of residential Mile End, Café Olimpico feels like your local, except that it serves coffee, not alcohol, from seven in the morning until midnight, seven days a week. I’m not a fan of alcohol, so pubs and bars have never held much appeal. However, Café Olimpico is exactly how I’d imagine my local would be if pubs served (excellent) coffee instead of beer…

Warm, welcoming, friendly: the ideal place to pop in for a quick espresso or to meet up with friends for an hour or two over a latte; Café Olimpico is a wonderful place. If I lived in the neighbourhood, I really would be in here all the time!

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