Quay Ingredient

Eggs Florentine and Toast at Quay IngredientTucked away under Newcastle‘s Tyne Bridge on a street that not even the local map seemed to think existed, Quay Ingredient took a little finding, but it was worth it (the trick is to walk until you are standing directly under the Tyne Bridge and, as if by magic, you’ll find yourself in front of Quay Ingredient).

The main draw for me is the range of excellent breakfasts: when I asked for recommendations, Quay Ingredient was top of everyone’s lists and it didn’t disappoint! Quay Ingredient’s not a huge place and you might have to wait for a table, such is its popularity. However, it’s definitely worth the wait with classics on the menu such as Eggs Florentine (my favourite), full English, grilled Caster kippers and cinnamon pancakes. Breakfast is served until 11.30 during the week and all day at weekends. If breakfast’s not your thing, there are sandwiches, salads and soup, plus cake, of course.

Quay Ingredient has a lovely, friendly atmosphere. You’re assured a warm welcome from Maggie, who works front of house, and her husband, Simon, who does all the cooking in the little kitchen at the back. Impressively, Maggie remembered me from my first visit six months before!

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The 2014 Coffee Spot Calendar

An espresso on one of the tables in the garden at the back of the Boston Tea Party, Park Street, BristolSo, I’ve decided to take the plunge and go into the brave world of Coffee Spot merchandising with a Coffee Spot calendar for 2014. The idea is to produce a professionally-printed calendar, A4 in size. Each month there will be landscape, A4 picture from one of the Coffee Spots I covered in that month.

Each calendar will cost £12.00, with a flat fee of £1.20 postage and packing (UK only), regardless of how many you order. For non-UK orders, I will provide you with a specific quote for the postage.

Update: it looks as if the calendar will be going ahead! However, I’d still like some more pre-orders please…

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Rave Coffee Café

Rave Coffee, Speciality Coffee RoastersTucked away on an industrial estate south of Cirencester is Rave Coffee, arguably serving the best coffee in Cirencester, if not the Cotswolds (I say arguably; before the arrival of Cotswold Artisan Coffee, it was hands-down, no-questions-asked the best. Rave is best known as a roaster, but less well-known is its small café. This serves the denizens of the industrial estate, and anyone else who can find it, with excellent takeaway coffee, Teapigs tea, hot chocolate and a limited range of cake.

Don’t come here expecting the full café experience: Rave’s licence is strictly takeaway service only. However, if you’re passing by and want a decent alternative to the nearby services on the A417) or don’t have the time/inclination to head into Cirencester proper to catch Cotswold Artisan Coffee, then Rave makes an excellent stopping off point on any road trip!

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Lunch Business Awards: 2013

Thumbnail - Lunch Business AwardsRegular readers will know that back in June I was in Attendant when I ran into Maria Bracken, Deputy Editor of Lunch Business. The short story is that Maria got me to nominate various Coffee Spots for the 2013 Lunch Business Awards (if you’re interested, you can read the long story here). Although the Awards remit stretches much further than just the humble coffee shop, two categories fell very much within my remit: Best Tea Experience and Best Coffee Experience.

I got my thinking cap on and ended up nominating a host of places. Fast forward a couple of months and the shortlists were published. In the Best Tea Experience category, I was delighted to find North Tea Power shortlisted, along with Harris & Hoole, and Edinburgh’s Eteaket. However, the best was still to come as the Best Coffee Experience shortlist was Cafe Boscanova, Flat Caps Coffee & Freemans Coffee, all places I’d nominated!

Fast forward another month or so and I found myself at the London Art House in Islington for the awards ceremony, which took place on Thursday, 26th September, as part of the Lunch! Show.

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The Coffee Spot is One!

The Coffee Spot CupToday’s Saturday Supplement marks a very special occasion: the Coffee Spot is one year old! Exactly one year ago today, at 14.15 on Friday, 28th September 2012, the Coffee Spot was launched with great fanfare. I can’t be too sure how many people actually visited the Coffee Spot that day since I wasn’t really paying attention, but I’m sure it wasn’t that many! Fast forward to today, 123 posts, 107 Coffee Spots and over 31,000 views later, and the Coffee Spot is doing quite well, in no small part to you, dear readers.

The whole point of the Coffee Spot is to share the love of great coffee and great places to have coffee. Without you, my readers, there would be no sharing, so thank you one-and-all, whether you’ve read every single Coffee Spot since the launch or whether you just dip in and out when you feel like it. This special Saturday Supplement, a review of the year gone by, is dedicated to each and every one of you.

And, by way of saying thank you, I have a very special competition (with prizes!) at the very end of the post!

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Angelina, rue de Rivoli

The Mont Blanc from AngelinaAngelina is something of a Paris institution, a grand Salon du Thé which exudes class, even more so than the venerable Café de Flore. From its shop on the rue de Rivoli, on the north edge of the Tuileries Gardens, it’s been serving the folk of Paris (and its fair share of visitors too: judging by the accents, faces and amount of English being spoken, Angelina is a major tourist draw) with exquisite cakes, artery-clogging hot chocolate and fine coffee since 1903.

While you might go to Café de Flore or its neighbour, Les Deux Magots, for the coffee, the people watching or the general ambience, with Angelina, you are definitely paying for the elegant surroundings and the (quite possibly literally) to-die-for patisserie such as the legendary Mont Blanc or the signature hot chocolate, l’Africain.

If you can’t get to the rue de Rivoli (or can’t get in!) there are other branches around Paris (plus one in Lyon and nine in Japan!). Alternatively, rue de Rivoli has a takeaway counter (useful for the budget-conscious). I’ve only tried the branch in the Louvre, which, while serving the same excellent fare, doesn’t quite have the same class as the rue de Rivoli original.

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Bean About Town, Kentish Town

A latte, complete with latte art by Rory, in a Bean About Town takeaway cup from the Kentish Town cart.For a while now, I’ve been describing Bean About Town’s Coffee Van at the Real Food Market at London’s South Bank Centre as my favourite coffee cart/van/barrow/stall. While the coffee is excellent and I like Bean About Town in general, an awful lot of this has to do with Claire, the French barista who runs the South Bank van on Fridays and at the weekend. For the rest of the week, Claire can be found at Bean About Town’s coffee barrow at Kentish Town. Or so I was told.

This is the story of how I made the long, long journey to Kentish town (four stops on the Northern Line, Charing Cross Branch, heading north from Euston) only to find that Claire had grown a beard and changed her name to Rory… Either that or I’d missed her shift by a couple of hours… I’ll let you decide…

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Caffeine Magazine

The cover of Issue 34 of Caffeine Magazine, an espresso being poured over ice cream to make an affogato.Issue 34 of Caffeine Magazine, came out a couple of weeks ago. If you’re new to the Coffee Spot or you haven’t heard of Caffeine Magazine, then you’re missing out, since it’s long been one of the UK’s foremost coffee publications.

As regular readers will know, I used to be Caffeine Magazine’s UK café correspondent. I made my debut in Issue 4, writing the Neighbourhood Watch feature, in which I explored the coffee scene in towns & cities around the UK, with my articles graced and enhanced by the wonderful photography of Amelia Hallsworth. In all, I wrote 26 Neighbourhood Watch features, with the last one appearing in Issue 31 (I got Issue 21 and Issue 28 off for good behaviour!). There’s more about Neighbourhood Watch and why we decided to bring it to an end here.

Caffeine publishes bi-monthly and is available for free in many good independent, speciality coffee shops around the country, with a particular emphasis on London. However, if you’re struggling to find a copy, it’s also available on-line for both Apple and other platforms (including Apple, Android, Kindle and Windows 8). Even better, there’s a postal subscription available; a year’s worth of Caffeine Magazine for just £23 (postage included, UK only; higher prices for Europe and worldwide). You can also order back issues, although many of the early ones have sold out.

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Lunch Business Awards: Preview

Thumbnail - Lunch Business AwardsCoffee shops are wonderful places, aren’t they? At about the same time as I was reading Chris Ward’s Out of Office, a book extolling the virtues of coffee shops as places to work and, perhaps more importantly, network, I found myself in the Attendant. Purely by chance, I ended up sitting at the same table as Maria Bracken, Deputy Editor of Lunch Business and, as you do, we got chatting…

[If you’re interested, you can read Maria’s piece about the Attendant in the on-line version of Lunch Business]

During the conversation, Maria told me all about the Lunch Business Awards. Although the Awards remit stretches much further than just the humble coffee shop, two categories fell very much within my remit: Best Tea Experience and Best Coffee Experience. Maria was keen to get some nominations and so I put my thinking cap on. In the next few weeks, I deluged the poor woman with a host of suggestions.

Fast forward a couple of months and I’m pleased to say that several Coffee Spots have made it to the shortlist stage, which I’m delighted about.

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Bar des Arts New Coffee Menu

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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