Yorks Espresso Bar

Posted on September 14, 2015 by Brian Williams

Yorks Espresso Bar is a new addition to Birmingham’s growing Yorks chain, which started with Yorks Bakery Cafe on nearby Newhall Street. Technically the espresso bar is now the longest serving branch of Yorks, since Newhall Street closed at the end of 2015, the building undergoing a major refurbishment. This led to the mantel of Yorks Bakery Cafe being taken up by the new flagship cafe/roastery on Stephenson Street.

Regular readers know my love of Coffee Spots in Victorian Arcades, so it’ll be no surprise that I fell in love with the Espresso Bar the moment I saw it. Occupying a corner spot at the Colmore Row end of the Great Western Arcade, which joins Colmore Row with Temple Row (once home of the comparatively venerable, but now closed, 6/8 Kafé), it’s an amazing location. Spread over a compact, elegant ground-floor and a stripped-back, cosy mezzanine, it gives Faculty a run for its money as Birmingham’s most beautifully-situated (and beautiful) coffee shop.

Smaller than the Bakery Cafe, sacrifices have had to be made. The extensive menu and freshly-cooked food has been replaced by a small range of (equally freshly-made) sandwiches and cake. However, there’s no compromise when it comes to coffee, meaning the “espresso bar” tag’s a bit misleading, Yorks offering an extensive range from Caravan, including three pour-overs, two espressos and decaf.

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Lunch Business Awards 2015

Posted on September 12, 2015 by Brian Williams

My involvement with the Lunch Business Awards goes back three years, to a chance encounter with Maria Bracken, the Awards organiser, in Attendant, the Fitzrovia coffee shop in a disused gents toilet. Since then I’ve worked with Maria every year, nominating Coffee Spots for the Awards, principally in the Best Coffee and Best Tea Experience categories. In particular, I’ve tried to nominate places outside of London.

I was delighted when, two years ago, Boscombe’s Café Boscanova won the Best Coffee Experience Award. I wasn’t so successful with my nominations the following year, but I was even more excited this year when the shortlists came out. Three of the five coffee shops on the Best Coffee Experience shortlist are places I’ve nominated and I nominated the entire shortlist for Best Tea Experience. Tea? I know? The irony of this is not lost on me. Joining them is the wonderful Daisy Green, which is on the shortlist for Group Operator of the Year.

The Awards Ceremony took place on Monday evening (14^th September) and I was there, loyalties torn, since I really wanted everybody that I nominated to win. However, you can’t have everything. After a quick rundown of the shortlists you can find out who won each of the Awards I’d nominated people for.

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Artisan, Ealing

Posted on September 10, 2015 by Brian Williams

Located on Ealing’s busy New Broadway, with a neat set of tables on the pavement outside, the Ealing branch of Artisan celebrated its first birthday just a couple of weeks ago. Joining the likes of the long-established Electric Coffee Company and fellow newcomers, Café Zee, Artisan is helping make Ealing a place worth visiting just for the coffee.

The third of four Artisans, it follows the original, which opened its doors less than four years ago Putney. Each of the Artisans is very much its own place. This one’s long, although not particularly thin (it’s wide enough for three rows of tables at the back), full of upcycled furniture, wooden floorboards, bare plaster and lights shrouded in paper-bag lampshades. Right at the back is the Artisan Coffee School (which will be the subject of its own Saturday Supplement in due course), which doubles as extra seating when there are no classes going on.

The coffee is from London’s Allpress, with the ubiquitous Redchurch blend on espresso. Filter coffee comes through the V60, with beans from London’s Nude Espresso and Berlin’s The Barn. Food is an equal part of the offering, with decent breakfast and lunch menus, plus lots of cake!

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Box Office Coffee

Posted on September 7, 2015 by Brian Williams

Box Office Coffee, which opened in November 2014, is the second speciality coffee shop in Bridport, one of a number of Dorset towns which are making themselves destinations for coffee lovers. Box Office is the little sister of the famous Number 35 Coffee House & Kitchen, located in nearby Dorchester. Set inside the box office of The Lyric Theatre (have you worked out where the name comes from yet?), Box Office is considerably small than Number 35, but, in coffee at least, every bit its equal, offering the same jaw-dropping array of ever-rotating beans. Indeed, the only constant (other than excellent quality) is the decaf, which comes from London’s Workshop.

Just as at Number 35, there’s a choice of four beans, two on espresso and two on filter (although space limitations means that only the Aeropress is used for filter coffee). The beans are chalked up on boards behind the counter, along with notes giving origin, process, altitude and tasting notes (including with and without milk for the espressos). As at Number 35, the bean’s the king, with no mention of the roaster.

If coffee’s not your thing, there’s loose-leaf tea, hot chocolate and a choice of two different cakes.

April 2016: Extremely sad news. Box Office had to close in March due to circumstance beyond Number 35’s control. A great loss for Bridport, although fortunately Soulshine Cafe remains.

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Anthony’s Italian Coffee House

Posted on September 5, 2015 by Brian Williams

Anthony’s Italian Coffee House, on 9^th Street, is a slice of culture/history in Philadelphia’s Italian Market district. Recommended (once again) by my friend and guide, Greg Cohen (of Coffee Guru App fame), Greg comes to the Italian Market to do his shopping. After taking me around several old-fashioned grocers and delicatessens, themselves a delight to visit, particularly if you like Italian food, he abandoned me at Anthony’s (“left” would be a more accurate statement, but abandoned has a more dramatic quality to it, don’t you think?).

Anthony’s is an old-fashioned (in style; Wifi being just one of the concessions to the modern age) Italian-American espresso bar/café of the type that I love. Less grand than say Boston’s Caffé Vittoria or New York’s Caffe Reggio, it has more in common with Soho’s Bar Italia. This, I feel, is much more in keeping with Philadelphia’s working class, blue collar roots.

Don’t come here looking for the latest third wave coffee experience though. The espresso is good, but you won’t find any single-origins or fancy hand-crafted pour-overs (although there is the obligatory bulk-brew filter). Instead, come for a slice of character and history, plus to put your feet up after all that shopping!

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Soulshine Café

Posted on September 3, 2015 by Brian Williams

Bridport is not necessarily where you would expect to find a great coffee shop. However, 15 miles west of Dorchester, Bridport boasts not one, but two excellent coffee shops: Box Office Coffee [now sadly closed] and the subject of today’s Coffee Spot, Soulshine Café, both of which opened in 2014.

Located on South Street (one of Bridport’s two main streets), at first there doesn’t seem much to Soulshine. The wide, bright shop front has three-person window-bars either side of the door and a handsome counter running in front of the back wall, but that’s about it.

If that’s all there was to it, Soulshine would still be a pretty good spot, but actually this is just a prelude of what’s to come. Head down a long, produce-lined corridor to the left of the counter and you’ll find yourself in Soulshine proper, a large, light-filled space that stretches out ahead of you. Even better, right at the back, the patio-doors look out onto a wonderful, secluded, sheltered courtyard.

Soulshine is built around three pillars of high-quality, locally-sourced organic food, juice and coffee. The latter comes from Bristol’s Extract (house-blend and decaf), with regularly-rotating guest roasters on the second espresso. There’s also an Aeropress option.

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Amid Giants & Idols

Posted on August 31, 2015 by Brian Williams

Halfway between Dorchester and Exeter, the Dorset seaside town of Lyme Regis is not somewhere you would stumble upon by accident (the A35, the main Dorchester-to-Exeter road, runs a few miles inland, requiring a very deliberate detour to reach Lyme Regis). With a permanent population of less than 4,000 people, it’s not somewhere you’d expect to find one of the country’s best speciality coffee shops either, but tucked away halfway up a hill on Silver Street, there’s the wonderful Amid Giants & Idols.

A warm, friendly place, run by the lovely Xanne, stepping into Amid Giants & Idols is a bit like popping round to her place for a cup of coffee and a slice of cake, where she entertains you in her (slightly) over-sized sitting room. It really is that cosy and informal. If that’s all there was to Amid Giants & Idols, then it would be a pretty special place, but add to that some wonderful coffee, as good as you’ll find, and you’re onto a real winner. That it’s all roasted (with passion, as it says on the A-board outside) on a vintage Swadlo roaster in a shed at the back of shop, is an unexpected bonus.

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Gasoline Alley, Grand Street

Posted on August 29, 2015 by Brian Williams

I first discovered New York City‘s Gasoline Alley in 2013, when I visited the original branch on Lafayette Street. This, the second branch, which opened in 2014, is just around the corner from one of my regular breakfast spots, the Landmark Coffee Shop (a very typical American diner). The original Gasoline Alley could actually be an alley and, while the same is true of this one with doors at either end, it’s more corridor than alley. Considerably smaller than the original, there’s space for two bar chairs at its solitary window-bar, with a pair of benches outside, one for each window.

I much prefer the atmosphere in this Gasoline Alley. However, where it wins hands down, just like the original, is that it serves Intelligentsia coffee and serves it extremely well. In fact, it might have served me the best shot of Intelligentsia’s seasonal Black Cat espresso blend that I’ve ever had!

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Espresso Kitchen

Posted on August 27, 2015 by Brian Williams

I discovered Espresso Kitchen while in Bournemouth researching my feature on Dorset in Caffeine Magazine, Issue 15. It came highly recommended, by the folks at South Coast Roast no less, so I decided I really ought to pop over. In an area known as The Triangle, Espresso Kitchen’s just a few minutes’ walk from Richmond Hill/South Coast Roast. It’s a tiny place, seating nine at a push, and feels even fuller and busier, with all available surfaces covered with decoration of every conceivable type. A complete contrast, for example, to Monday’s Coffee Spot, the similarly-sized, but incredibly minimalist BLK Coffee.

Unlike BLK, which is less than three weeks old, Espresso Kitchen is approaching its third birthday. Owner and head-barista Fran is Italian. In setting up Espresso Kitchen, she wanted to recreate the traditional Italian espresso-bar atmosphere of her homeland, the sort of friendly, chatty place where everyone knows (almost) everyone else.

However, when it comes to the coffee itself, Fran parts ways with her compatriots. She’s no fan of the darkly roasted, bitter, robusta-inspired stereotype of Italian espresso. Instead, she turned to local roaster, Beanpress Coffee Co, who supplies the house-blend, and, along with various guests, a second espresso too.

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Flat Caps Coffee Update

Posted on August 26, 2015 by Brian Williams

Flat Caps Coffee, brainchild of the lovely Joe Meagher, is not only one of my favourite coffee shops in Newcastle, but it’s one of my favourites in the whole country. The only problem is that I don’t get to Newcastle very often… However, whenever I’m in town, I make a point of popping in to say hello.

I first wrote about Joe and Flat Caps in April 2013, writing a longer piece after I visited in October that year for Caffeine Magazine. So, what’s changed since then? Well, honestly, not a lot. Joe’s still Joe, Flat Caps is still Flat Caps and the coffee’s still excellent.

However, since I published my Coffee Spot on Flat Caps, Joe has, in the way that coffee shop owners do, redecorated and also started using single-serve Kalita Wave pour-over filters. And every time he sees me, he nags me that the photos on the Coffee Spot are out-of-date…

March 2017: I’ve just learnt that Ridley Place is closing at the end of the month. Sad news, but I understand Joe’s reasons for taking this step. If you’re interested, this is what I wrote about the closing of Ridley Place. The good news is that Flat Caps will continue at Flat Caps Carliol Square and Flat Caps Campus North.

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Brian's Coffee Spot

Devoted to Coffee

Yorks Espresso Bar

Lunch Business Awards 2015

Artisan, Ealing

Box Office Coffee

Anthony’s Italian Coffee House

Soulshine Café

Amid Giants & Idols

Gasoline Alley, Grand Street

Espresso Kitchen

Flat Caps Coffee Update