recs: café life LONDON [where to go for good coffee in London]
As we are all more or less coffee addicts lovers, I thought it would be nice to check out café life LONDON (An Insider's Guide to the City's Neighbourhood Cafés) and rec some locations.
The guide delivers very interesting information, I learned a lot! Did you know that many founders of London's artisan coffee bars are from New Zealand or Australia? I thought I knew a lot about coffee, but was oblivious of the New Zealand-ish and Australian influences on London's coffee scene. Now I'm curious and want to check out these artisan coffee bars!
The following cafés are located at Soho, Fitzrovia and Mayfair. Some have other locations in London which can be found on their websites.
Prufrock Coffee
23-25 Leather Lane, Clerkenwell
Tube: Chancery Lane
Why I like it: Staff are young, tattooed baristas in Converse - the Prufrockers. Don't be fooled by their laid-back disposition. Their interest in coffee goes way beyond casual curiosity. Many compete in brewing contests and they live and breathe coffee. It's a roomy, minimal space - a former sex shop - with painted brick walls and pink-painted pillars. Go for Prufrock for a caffeine-fix of the highest order and come away knowing more about coffee than you did before you set foot through the door.
Flat White
17 Berwick Street, Soho
Tube: Oxford Circus
Why I like it: This is the London caffeine den that's often credited with kick-starting the wave of Antipodean-style coffee bars in the UK. Flat White is said to recreate a slice of New Zealand in the heart of London. It isn't so much a place in which to while away an afternoon as a place to refuel with a top coffee. Service is brisk, but these guys are serious about the coffee they're making for you. At Flat White the hidden extras are in the coffee itself.
Taylor Street Baristas
22 Brook's Mews, Mayfair
Tube: Oxford Circus
Why I like it: If a coffee's not good enough to serve, the barista will make another. The same care and effort goes into the first coffee of the day as the last.
Sacred
13 Ganton Street, Soho
Tube: Oxford Circus
Why I like it: Coffee history was written here: Sacred was founded in 2005 by New Zealnaders who hit on the idea of bringing gourmet coffe to London. They opened at almost exactly the same time that Flat White opened its doors a short walk away. Suddenly London had two Kiwi-owned cafés that both focussed on hihg quality, artisan-style coffee. Coffee was on the rise of what beame known as the Third Wave with a more artisan-style approach in terms of how it was sourced, presented, and tasted.
Kaffeine
66 Great Titchfield Street, Fitzrovia
Tube: Oxford Circus
Why I like it: Kaffeine sits comfortably among a handful of long-established, old-school cafés doing similar sandwich-style food, yet without the coffee element or service that Kaffeine's Australia founder had in mind when he was planning his venture. "What we wanted to do was focus on the food and coffee and allow customer to escpae from their world for five minutes orhalf an hour, then leave and say, right, I feel better now." In its first year of operation, Kaffeine was awared Runner-up for Best Cup of Coffee in London by London's weekly Time Out magazine.
All information given in this post is from café life LONDON. Of course I would love to get some recs from fandomers actually living in London! A personal rec is always so much better! :-)