London Coffee 2014

The barista-owner of the cafe I frequent was very excited for me when I mentioned I was going to London, as he used to live there and worked at Workshop Coffee, so he made a map for me of where I could go for coffee.


 
All four Workshop branches were on my list, and Marylebone was the first one I visited. I could see the similarities between my local cafe and here – the same wooden benchtop was used. It was nice and had a feeling of homeliness to it.

Workshop Clerkenwell was next, and it was a full fledged cafe, complete with a lunch and dinner menu. It also had a roaster out back! The middle picture was a cured salmon dish that I chose, accompanied with wasabi, ginger, and avocado. Suprisingly, it didn’t come with toast, though it was offered when I ordered the dish.

Workshop Fitzrovia was kind of majestic. It felt very high end and royal, especially with the Madagascan granite tables. It was a feeling of elegance, and I managed to try a massive-sized almond croissant here.

And finally, Workshop Holborn. This was a large, kind of empty-feeling space, but at the same time it felt office-like, where people could come in and conduct meetings. I found it really cool that each branch had a different feel to it – even the cups were different! A very cool thing to do.

Tap coffee is a cool little place to go to, had a Nicaraguan coffee which was quite nice and had the lemon acidity I was looking for.

Notes Cafe was also a cute little hangout with a music store attached to it. It serves up some fine coffee.

Prufrock was also a pretty awesome cafe, with space downstairs for coffee lessons. My brother received a particularly fancy latte art in his drink!

And Kaffeine. Oh Kaffeine. Founded by an Australian, this place is amazing! The pastries looked awesome, so we ordered our favourites: portuguese tart, and caneles. Those pastries were spot on and the best I’ve had – so delicious that we had to go back! And now they have a second store, which is super awesome! They also had a tasting plate – espresso, flat white, and the little glass in the middle was a cascara and earl grey palate cleanser. The coffee here was unbelievable, the espresso was so tasty, and that flat white was so sweet I couldn’t believe there wasn’t any sugar in it. The tea was also superb – I should actually try and make the same one day! The cascara helped maintain the flavour of coffee throughout, while the earl grey added some aromatics to the drink. If there’s one cafe I’d go back to, it’s this one.