Kaffeine's daily nugget of wisdom

and as always the greatest selection of cakes in the capital ....

Kaffeine blog post is here: http://buzzlondon.blogspot.co.uk/search?q=kaffeine

The HOTter than HOT Breakfast

 

6.30 am and a text from my most ingenius friend Kate. Wonderfully for me it seems someone has made the grave mistake of cancelling his place for the hottest breakfast ticket in town ... would I like to go ... start time 7.15am. Luckily (again) for me, this takes place in her gorgeous flat just around the corner so YES PLEASE.

The concept of The Hot Breakfast: 'Meet inspiring people. Eat a good breakfast. Change the world.' 

7 people are carefully chosen every or every other Tuesday to gather round her table, overlooking Battersea Park, to network, chatter and try to put the world to right over a SUMPTUOUS breakfast. 

Though - she tells me firmly - "it's not about the food" it is difficult for it not to be given the three course and stunningly presented feast on offer.  We start with delicious homemade granola, fresh fruits and yoghurt all in beautiful large glass jars on the table ... then 7 individual ramekins of bubbling baked eggs with spinach & mackerel are procured from the kitchen (served with hot buttered sourdough toast) followed by warm banana bread with ricotta. Accompanying all this are cafetieres of coffee and glass teapots of Good & Proper Tea.

With a geophysicist, sustainability guru and Founder of Social Networking site Dirt among the inspirational people around the table, the conversation was abuzz and it was extremely hard to tear myself away.

I won't write more, though I certainly could, because you would be completely mad not to check it out for yourselves. Sign up now by emailing thehotbreakfast@gmail.com and requesting a registration form. Don't delay it is justifiably coveted ticket   

Good & Proper Tea @ The Kerb, Kings Cross

Brill, Exmouth Market

Bluebelles (Portabello Road)

Dean Street Townhouse, Soho

A special birthday treat breakfast, this was much more formal and upmarket location than the usual choice of cafe. It's New York Style diner meets hotel lounge and the uniformed staff are highly professional - no chance for the usual caffeinated wittering!

The food - chosen from an extensive menu - was delicious and beautifully prepared. Given the earliness of the meeting, we were rather unadventurous, choosing a basket of fresh croissants and a danish as well as a bowl of creamy yoghurt with banana, raspberries (a special addition on request!), sprinkled with candied pecans and a drizzle of honey. The coffee, Darlington Blend, was dark and delicious and we began with large freshly made glasses of apple, orange, carrot and ginger.

Although when we arrived, at 7.45, the place was pretty much empty, it was full, and buzzing by 9 am and judging by the quality of the food it's not difficult to imagine why.

Birdhouse Cafe, St Johns Hill

Department of Coffee and Social Affairs, Leather Lane

Poilane, off the Kings Road

Poilane, makers of the quality artisanal bread, have opened up this fantastic cafe of the same name just off the Kings Road.

Don't be put off by the location. The space is large and airy with a wooden tree house feel. There are a great variety of places to perch: a round table underneath a small tree, large long tables and small single desk style seats with individual tables attached (perfect if you want to be on your lap top as each has a plug).

The coffee is square mile but it's the food that's most exciting ... from a tantalizing selection of cakes, muffins and pastries to fantastic tartines -hot toasted open face sandwiches, all prepared at a counter in front of you.

My croissant was the best I've tasted this side of the channel: soft buttery perfection, with a flaky outside - served with unpasteurised fresh butter and from the vast jars lining the walls, home made pear jam infused with fresh vanilla pods.

Just right if you're looking for: simple freshly baked everything, a place to work - there's wireless internet, plugs and desk seats
Not ideal if: you are looking for somewhere off the beaten track, you don't want to be next to a gaggle of fur clad Chelsea mums

Gail's SOHO

   

















Okay yes it is popping up all over London and with a brownie costing a staggering £4.00 it's not exactly easy on the wallet but that does not diminish my love of Gails.

What is not to love? The coffee is sensational. It's union blend: dark, deliciously strong (3 shots in a regular) and comes steaming hot in large mugs. The food is exquisite: home made cakes, scones, granola bars, brownies, muffins (dairy and sugar free) and sandwiches are all made with the finest freshest, largely organic ingredients and the freshly baked bread selection is one of the best in London (I highly recommend the dark French sourdough).  There is also an outstanding breakfast menu which includes fresh toasted muffins with bacon fried egg & slow roast tomato and huge buttermilk pancakes topped with hot maple roasted pears a scattering of pecans and greek yoghurt.

Sitting in the Soho branch, at a cosy large table in the back of the white brick seating area, tucking into a large coffee and raspberry muffin - a rare treat on a snowy afternoon -is quite literally heavenly.  The Northcote Road branch is also a favourite of mine despite always being overrun with gossiping mothers and prams!

Best for: huge, strong coffees, a delectable selection of breads & cakes and super friendly staff.
Not ideal if: you're watching the pennies

Brunch @ The Modern Pantry, Clerkenwell

In a nut shell: unbelievably good food, sensational coffee ... slightly lacking in atmosphere.

The 30th December, with most of London a post Christmas ghost town, is perhaps not the time to see anywhere at it's best and so it was slightly to be expected that this renowned Clerkenwell cafe come restaurant would not be exactly buzzing. 

Having said that, even if it had been full, the white tables and chairs make it feel slightly more clinical than cosy and not exactly the kind of place you want to get settled into for hours.  On the plus side,there is a lovely wooden floor which adds a homey feel and the smell of coffee that overwhelms you as soon as you walk in the room is just too good to be true. The beans are roasted down the road at Caravan and deserve all the praise they get. 

The food is also top notch. My perfectly poached eggs came with sourdough toast and juicy sweet slow roasted tomatoes and I was very soon over my disappointment at the fact that they had run out of spinach (which was also meant to be included) and the option of a side of crushed avocado - I had seen on the online menu - wasn't on offer. The organic apple juice, served with ice and lime went down an absolute treat as, of course, did the exquisite coffee. My friend chose crispy bacon and poached eggs on muffins with an expertly made hollandaise.

From the look of what people around us were tucking into, the food was all pretty fantastic and the cocktails looked great too.

Kaffeine

There is no doubt that this Great Titchfield Street landmark is the best thing about moving office to W1 ... though it is certainly to blame for my rapidly dwindling bank balance.

Walking into this tiny, permanently packed and bustling cafe haven each morning - particularly after a month in South America where they live off an unpalatable powdered concoction, mostly nescafe - is the undoubted highlight of my day and really makes me realise why I am so lucky to live in London. Ok admittedly we did spend four days on an organic coffee plantation in Bolivia, but still ...

Every cup of coffee (made from Squaremile beans) is prepared with huge amounts of love and a great deal of care and precision by the baristas. All the staff are incredibly friendly and eager to please - patiently answering my never ending questions and doing their best to humour the somewhat pedantic requests.

And oh wow the cakes: Kaffeine certainly boasts one of the best and most extensive selections I've seen; normally consisting of iced friands, blueberry and/or chocolate muffins to die for, a selection of croissants from flower power bakery and the most fantastic banana bread which comes warm and toasted with butter.

The enormous portions of steaming porridge, made with bon soy, are perfect for winter mornings and the lunch salads and quiches which appear later on in the day look amazing though definitely on the pricey side.

My big regret is that I'm always dashing back to the office and never have time to sit at one of the raised wooden tables or cushioned benches that line the back walls to enjoy the buzzing atmosphere.

One word of advice, if you're opting for a flat white or other milk based coffee, make sure to ask for it extra hot.

Lowry and Baker (Portabello)

After biking through the busy crowds of Portobello on a beautifully crisp sunny Sunday, I couldn't have arrived at a more perfect and cosy haven ... more like a higgledy piggledy kitchen filled with mismatched vintage furniture and shelves of jumbled crockery ... an open kitchen staffed by three beautiful people serving their many customers ... all happily settled at tables ... reading the papers, chatting over coffees (made expertly from Monmouth beans) and tucking into the most delicious selection of foods, chosen from the menu scrawled in chalk across a blackboard on the wall.

My avocado on toast with poached egg was quite simply perfection - they seemed to have read my greedy mind and delivered it exactly as i hoped, lots of avocado mushed with lemon, oil and sea salt, scattered with pine nuts and one perfectly cooked poached egg on the side.

There was a wonderful selection of cakes ... most made by the co-owner Maya, who was busy behind the counter ...  ranging from scones and banana bread to a deliciously decadent banoffee cake and gluten free raspberry and almond friands.

It's busy but the kind of place you just want to settle in and stay for hours. And we did ... chatting and enjoying the food, coffee and homely atmosphere until the sun dipped behind the buildings outside and they started winding down for the evening.

Certainly a perfect place to take your work or reading and while away the day. I can't wait to go back and do just that.

Ropewalk - Bermondsey

I didn't think anywhere could rival the buzz of Broadway Market on a Saturday morning but today I have possibly been proved wrong ...

Hidden away under Bermondsey's arches, it's like walking into another world ... bursting with life and brimming with bustling crowds eagerly awaiting .... or happily tucking into one of the many gastronomic delights on offer from the stalls, bars, pop ups, cafe's and bakeries which line the narrow alleyway or nestle under the arches.

If it's coffee you're after there's the option of the cafemate cart soon after you enter, serving hasbean blend and the most decadent snack ... the duffin from Beas of Bloomsbury (who have their main kitchen round the back), which, we are informed before the last two are whipped away ... are a cross between a doughnut and a muffin, rolled in sugar and butter and injected with jam.  From what I've read, it's the cream doughnuts from St Johns Bakery that really lure the crowds ... sadly though, after following the amazing waft of freshly baking bread and arriving at their designated arch, they had sold out ... definitely testimony to their popularity and one of many reasons to go back.

But it is certainly not just the coffee and food that makes this place such a landmark ... it's the wonderfully quirky and original bars and stalls .... there's a man clad in top hat and tails at the entrance to a large wareouse full of vintage furniture ... standing behind a huge old fashioned till serving prosecco and wines ... then there's the brightly coloured pop-up Sparrow Bar put on by small-batch London gin distillers Little Bird Gin - selling cocktails in large jam jars with straws and shiny maraschino cheries ...

Was all so vibrant and wonderful I could witter on and on but I won't ... I urge you to cancel all your plans for this weekend and make sure you head down there to check it out for yourself.

A crisp sunny morning at Colombia Rd ...

Stalls brimming with flowers of every colour, shape and size, the shouts of their sellers, bustling cafe's, vintage shops and galleries lining the road, the pavement and cobbled street corners thick with people sipping coffee in the sun listening to one of the many musicians and bands strumming, singing, playing away ... is there anywhere more wonderful to spend a Sunday morning...

This time we brought coffees (climpson blend) and enormous gooey flap jacks from the lovely lads outside the Royal Oak Pub and joined the throng sitting on the cobbles sipping, munching and chatting to the sound of one of the resident bands strumming away.

There is also Lilly Vanilly (see previous post) and a other wonderful places along the road to chose from.

Cakes from Lilly Vanilly

MONMOUTH, Borough Market ... where it all began

After a freezing cold 3 hours at The Globe watching the fantastic Mark Rylance as Richard III ...  there could not have been a more perfect place -bustling with life and activity, heaters glowing, the smell of their exceptional coffee in the air -  into which to dive and shelter from the cold and wet autumn afternoon.

The queue stretched out the door of course and we had to leap into the first seats that came free around the huge central wooden table.

Once happily and cosily settled we could fully appreciate the deservedly renowned and truly sensational coffee.

There is a wealth of delicious cakes, pastries, bowls of fresh baguette and home made jams to chose from but I have to confess, on this occasion, we snuck in the world famous brownies from Konditor and Cook (shhhhhhhhhhh).

Federation Coffee - Brixton

At home amongst the buzz of Brixton Village, Federation was jam packed with people enjoying their Saturday morning caffeine fix. And it's hardly surprising the queue is long. The coffee, "contrabrand" blend, is roasted at their own roastery round the corner and our flat whites were absolutely perfect - deliciously strong with the milk expertly steamed to a lovely creamy thickness.  The amazing array of cakes and pastries was consistently replenished with new delights from the kitchen next door ... flapjacks, blueberry friands, rosewater iced bites, muffins, brownies and many more. My friend chose a delicious steaming hot croque monsieur.  My only complaint - I would have liked to see a simple croissant or toast on offer - had to nip next door to pinch a slice of bread and jam! It's small and cosy with a 'lived in', urban feel: crammed with unfurnished wooden tables and chairs, blackboards and a book shelf ... the kind of place you want to stay in all day.

Tapped & Packed

Fernandez and Wells, Somerset House

We first discovered this great spot early on a crisp, clear Monday morning as we met for a super quick but completely essential post weekend natter and the first flat white of the working week ahead.  We lingered outside as the morning sun doused the courtyard of Somerset House - a pretty epic location it has to be said.  Despite being the only people there at that time, we were most impressed by our delicious coffees, the tempting display of croissants and cakes, the lemon tinged water (small touch but appreciated on a hot summers morn) and the beautiful Spanish waiters.

I loved it so much that I went back for a large glass of ice cold rose two evenings that same week, by which time the place was buzzing.  If you're looking for atmosphere and in a stunning location I could not recommend this place more highly.