Darkroom Espresso

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A lovely latte-art swan in a flat white from Darkroom Espresso.For almost as long as I’ve been writing the Coffee Spot, my friend Sharon has been nagging me to visit Swindon. Initially, there was the well-regarded Cafelicious, but that closed down (the owners going on to open Cotswold Artisan Coffee in nearby Cirencester) before I could get there. Oh well, I thought.

Then, in 2014, two coffee shops opened within a few weeks of each other: Monday’s Coffee Spot, Baila, and the subject of today’s Coffee Spot, Darkroom Espresso. Darkroom almost didn’t survive long enough for me to visit: set up by Anglo-Australian couple, Andy and Jacky, our wonderful Government decided to deport Jacky (the Aussie), almost destroying a much-loved small business in the process.

The good news, however, is that Andy and Jacky were able to sell Darkroom before they left to Arthur and Will, co-owners of Oxford’s Brew, who took over this summer. These days you can find Arthur behind the counter, along with good friend of the Coffee Spot, Steve, the only man to get me to visit a Harris & Hoole…

Darkroom gets all its coffee from the nearby Round Hill Roastery, with single-origins on espresso and bulk-brew. There’s also tea from Cardiff’s Waterloo Tea.

March 2019: some excellent news! For a little while, it looked as if Darkroom was going to have to close, but I can confirm that from today, it’s under new ownership, with old friend, Steve, stepping in to take over the place. If you’re in the area, do pop in and say hello!

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Boston Tea Party, Park Street Update

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A latte with a fern-leaf motif in the milkIn many ways, the Boston Tea Party on Bristol’s Park Street, where the Boston Tea Party chain began, is also where the Coffee Spot started, albeit a good few years later. It’s the first place that I wrote about, the first Coffee Spot being published three years and two days ago on 28th September 2012. As the Coffee Spot heads into its fourth year, it seems only fitting that I should revisit where it all began.

So, what’s changed in that time? Well, quite a bit, actually. The coffee is still the same, the Tea Party favouring a bespoke Extract Coffee Roasters’ seasonal espresso blend, and while the food menu has gone through some iterations, it’s still the same core of excellent cakes and all-day breakfasts.

No, what’s actually changed is the place itself. Well, not so much changed, just expanded. Since I was last there three years ago, the seating has pretty much doubled, with the Tea Party adding a second garden and a second upstairs room.

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Baila Coffee & Vinyl

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Detail of some of the drawing on the wall behind the bench in Baila Coffee & Vinyl, proclaiming Baila's fresh, brewed coffee and light roast espresso.Baila Coffee & Vinyl is on Swindon’s southern side, “up the hill” as the locals put it, in the part of old Swindon that actually looks and feels like a pleasant small town, rather than the post-war concrete shopping area that is the modern centre. Near the top of Victoria Road, Baila’s a coffee shop that buys/sells vinyl records rather than a record shop which serves coffee (The Keen Bean Coffee Club, for example).

As befits somewhere that’s all about vinyl (black), coffee (black too) and coffee with milk (white), the décor is predominantly black and white, with added touches of black and occasional splashes of white for variety. The floor is at least (dark) wood, as are the tables and chairs.

The coffee is from nearby Extract Coffee Roasters, with Extract’s standard espresso blend in the main hoper, plus decaf. Single origins make an appearance as filter coffee, Baila unusually utilising the Clever Dripper. There are also smoothies and loose-leaf tea.

On Thursday, Friday and Saturday evenings, Baila reopens from seven in the evening until eleven as a bar, serving craft beers, gin, wine and spirits. The bar also makes an appearance from four until ten on Sunday afternoon/evening.

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The Decaf Challenge

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A handful of green coffee beans on the left and a handful of decaffeinated green beans on the right, showing the difference in colour, with the decaffeinated beans a dark shade of grey.Today’s Saturday Supplement is something of a hobby horse of mine: the search for great decaf coffee. Generally speaking, I believe that the state of decaf in the speciality coffee industry is pretty healthy. For example, I was in Cardiff on Monday, where I had two excellent decaf flat whites, one in Artigiano Espresso (roasted by Origin) and the other in The Plan (roasted by James Gourmet Coffee).

So, it’s not that there isn’t great decaf out there, being roasted by some top-quality roasters. Instead, the issue’s one of perception, with the decaf drinker often being made to feel like a second-class citizen. It’s a rare day when I don’t see a tweet along the lines of “death before decaf”. Frankly, I find it insulting to all decaf drinkers out there, not to mention the great roasters who are going to considerable lengths to produce amazing-tasting (caffeinated) coffee, extracting the maximum flavour from the beans, only to have their products reduced to a mechanism for delivering caffeine. Why? I just don’t get it.

To counter this, I launched the Coffee Spot Decaf Challenge at this year’s London Coffee Festival, the aim being to highlight the great decaf coffee out there.

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Harvest Canteen

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The Ouseburn Coffee Co. logo: the letters OCC in white against a black background with the words Ouseburn Coffee Co. beneath a white line.A couple of minutes’ walk apart on Newcastle’s St George’s Terrace, Harvest Canteen and Monday’s Coffee Spot, Café 1901, couldn’t be further apart in look and feel. Both, however, are outstanding. Both do great food: breakfast, lunch and a wide range of cake. Both also do great locally-roasted coffee. If pushed, I’d say Harvest does great coffee with food, 1901 doing great food with coffee. It’s more emphasis than any difference in substance though, Harvest projecting as a very modern coffee shop, 1901 as a cosy café.

Harvest Canteen is the coffee-shop offshoot of Newcastle roaster Ouseburn Coffee Co. (OCC), which roasts all the coffee. On espresso is the Foundry No 1 blend, with a single-origin (changing every two months) available as both espresso and filter (V60 or Aeropress).

However, as the “Canteen” element of the name suggests, from the day it opened in June 2014 it’s been about more than just coffee. Given the ridiculously small food preparation area (in reality a work surface behind the counter), the all-day breakfast/brunch menu is impressive. Based around poached eggs with various toppings, there are also pancakes, pastries, toast and granola. At lunchtime, these are joined by salads, soup, tortilla and wraps.

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The Coffee Spot is Three!

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cropped-1-x-1-DSC_4909_spotless.jpgToday’s Saturday-Supplement-on-a-Wednesday marks a very special occasion: the Coffee Spot is three years old! Well, it will be: on Monday, 28th September it’ll be exactly three years since I launched the Coffee Spot (14.15 on Friday, 28th September 2012 to be precise). This time last year, when The Coffee Spot was two, I’d made 179 posts, covering 113 Coffee Spots in my second year, which had attracted over 84,000 views. This was up from my first year, when I’d made a mere 123 posts, covering 107 Coffee Spots with 31,000 views.

My third year, however, has been even better. Although I’ve made roughly the same number of posts (180, covering 115 Coffee Spots), my third year has seen well over 115,000 views, more than my first two years combined! This success is largely down to you, dear readers. Without you, there would be no point in the Coffee Spot, so to thank you, I’m organising a Coffee Spot birthday party. This will take place on Wednesday, 30th September, two days after the Coffee Spot’s actual third birthday, and will be at the lovely Beany Green, Paddington. Anyone who wants to come is welcome to join me.

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Café 1901

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A drawing on the wall of Cafe 1901Café 1901 is a wonderful spot inside Newcastle’s Jesmond Methodist Church. It’s a strange space, in that, just as you think you’ve discovered all there is to it, you realise that there’s more! Starting with the tables outside on the pavement, and finishing with the seating at the back by the counter, there are four distinct parts to Café 1901, each with its own specific charm.

However, Café 1901 is more than a lovely space. It serves excellent food, with full breakfast and lunch menus, plus a decent selection of cake. What’s more, the coffee is excellent too. With beans from the nearby Colour Coffee Company (the roasting offshoot of Pink Lane Coffee), there’s a concise espresso-based menu plus hand-poured filter through either V60 or Chemex.

However, where many would be satisfied with a single espresso blend throughout the year, Café 1901 regularly rotates its espresso, running a different single-origin or blend every couple of weeks. Another single-origin is available for the filter coffee, while there’s also decaf from Bristol’s Extract Coffee Roasters and tea from the local  Ringtons. Ever adventurous, Café 1901 was also serving a cold-brew (hot) chocolate from Kokoa Collection.

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Quarter Horse Coffee Roasters

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The Giesen roaster at Quarter Horse, Birmingham.Quarter Horse Coffee started life on Oxford’s Cowley Road (where the original Quarter Horse Coffee has become Peleton Espresso), where it used coffee from Square Mile. However, in 2015, Quarter Horse moved to Birmingham, setting up a café/roastery. Nathan, who founded the original Quarter Horse with colleague James, hails from Normal, Illinois, and was a roaster before he came to the UK, so this marked a return to his (roasting) roots.

Quarter Horse created a lovely spot on Bristol Street, the roastery sharing the space with a large, open café (which features in its own Coffee Spot), Originally, this was behind a waist-high counter, which meant that the roastery was visible from pretty much every part of the building, but a major remodelling during the enforced COVID-19 shutdown saw the roastery enclosed in its own room. The roastery is still going strong, with the roaster, a 15 kg Giesen (which has been the mainstay of the operation since it opened in 2015), visible through a window in the wall dividing the roastery from the café.
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6/8 Kafé, Millennium Point

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The 6/8 Kafé logo, the numbers "6/8" in black, with the words "six eight" in red beneath them.The original 6/8 Kafé (now sadly closed), one of Birmingham’s first specialty coffee shops, was a cosy, compact spot on Temple Row, right in the centre. The new 6/8 Kafé is about as far away from that as you can get in almost every respect except that both serve excellent coffee. Located in Birmingham’s new Millennium Point development, the new 6/8 is filling a valuable niche: serving speciality coffee in a mass-market setting.

Millennium Point is a science centre extraordinaire, housing Birmingham’s Thinktank science museum and faculties from both Birmingham City University and Birmingham Metropolitan College. And 6/8 Kafé. Frankly, I take my hat off to Devinder, 6/8’s owner, both for getting such a high-profile spot and for having the bravery to go for it. It’s exactly the sort of spot you’d expect to see a run-of-the-mill chain, so it’s refreshing to see somewhere serving excellent coffee.

And make no mistake, although Millennium Point lacks the original 6/8 Kafé’s cosy atmosphere, the quality’s every bit as good. The only compromise is dispensing with hand-pour filters, sticking instead to a single Has Bean blend on espresso. That said, it’s a pleasant place to sit and drink your coffee or quickly refuel before/after visiting Thinktank.

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Lanark Coffee (Drink, Shop & Dash Update)

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Shot of a tulip cup on a black saucer, taken from above. The coffee is almost gone, but the latte art pattern, a tulip, is still plainly visible in the remainder of the milk in the bottom of the cup.Drink, Shop & Dash was the smaller sibling and speciality coffee outlet of next door neighbour, Drink, Shop & Do on the Caledonian Road. It was part of a growing speciality coffee scene in the area, led by the (now venerable) Caravan and including Noble Espresso (now Craft Coffee) and Notes. Just around the corner from King’s Cross station, it was a welcome spot, especially when you needed to take the weight off your feet.

So, I was surprised and more than a little disappointed when Phil Wain reported on twitter that Dash had closed. However, all was not as gloomy as it first appeared. It turned out that the two key people running Dash had, for entirely independent reasons, given their notice within a week of each other. Faced with a sudden recruitment crisis, Drink, Shop & Do had a dilemma. Fortunately, up popped Greg of Haggerston’s Lanark Coffee. Greg knew of the predicament from links with Dash’s roasters Alchemy and a deal was struck.

No sooner had Dash closed, it had reopened, Greg taking over behind the counter at the start of September. Naturally, I had to go along and see what Greg and Lanark had done to the place…

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