This page is - London Coffee Guide

Book Review - The London Coffee Guide, 2011.

Writing a guide to coffee shops is always a difficult job. 

There's no end of guides to cafes in Britain; the benchmark publication is probably from the tea world, with the annual guide to Britain’s Best Afternoon Tea, produced by the Tea Guild and published through the AA – that’s a semi-hardback which covers 140 venues in 180 pages, and with the power of the AA behind it, it sells in tens of thousands a year at £9.99. 

Probably the very top café book, but certainly an acquired taste and for specific enthusiasts, is still Classic Cafes by Adrian Maddox, published in 2004 (we think) to celebrate the remaining traditional cafes of London, a homage to formica but with an espresso relevance... atmosphere drips from every evocative monochrome picture.

On the other hand, probably the worst guides are the ones which appear regularly in the newspapers and glossy magazines when they have run out of other ideas. It has been suggested by many in the coffee trade that some features editor simply asks round the editorial department: ‘anybody know a good café?’ and the result is published as  ‘the UK’s top ten’.    And the standard  of guides on the internet varies wildly.

Where does Allegra’s new book stand?   It does very well.

The first surprise about the London Coffee Guide is that it is such a substantial volume – a hundred venues in 160 pages. We had expected that instead of going for two pages per café in many cases, and a fair amount of ‘artistic white space’, they would have settled for something more compact and pocket-sized.  The advantage, of course, is that it does make a very decent meaningful size for a gift or present.

In content, it is a work which has involved a lot of research. It divides London up into ten areas, within which each featured venue gets about 70 words of description, notes of the owners, baristas, equipment used, drink prices, food served and whose coffee they use.  Each of these entries is fascinating in its own way… typically, just go through the listings of the espresso machines and grinders, and see what conclusions you draw about preferred equipment currently in use.  (And indeed, about the investment which these bars have made in their kit).  

In many cases, a head barista is named.  This is extremely unusual – indeed, we don’t think we have ever come across it before.  This, it could be argued, is a good thing, in that it adds to the personality of each venue… if we can have diners going to restaurants because they’ve heard of the chef, why should we not encourage the idea of coffee-drinkers going to a café to see what a named barista is doing? 

For the business analyst, the detail is fascinating in a different way – you could present a fairly forceful argument for the concept of coffee as the ‘affordable luxury’ with the backing of an average of the prices to be found here.  We do know some people in coffee brands who prepare spreadsheets of pricings all around London and other cities, and they will seize upon this feature. We may be wrong, but we think the highest price we found was £3.25, and no, that wasn’t  Andronicas’ bar in Harrod’s!

We had rather expected that the descriptions of the food would be undetailed - because this is something which applies to virtually all guides. We have observed many times in the past that the words ‘delicious’, ‘gourmet’, and ‘mouthwatering’ don’t actually tell you what anything tastes like – exactly the same criticism applies to the Tea Guild’s book, and frankly, it goes for the vast majority of restaurant reviews you can read outside those of the top critics.   It was only when we got to the back end of the book, having read through the whole thing, that it occurred to us that the same observation applies to the coffee – yes, it’s interesting to see that a venue serves a blend is by Square Mile, or Union, or Monmouth (and most delightful of all, occasionally some little-known names, such as Giles Dick-Read’s rural roastery).  But it would have added to the experience to say which of these roasters’ coffees a venue chose, with what intentions, and with what result.  Perhaps that may have been demanding too much.

One very noticeable feature, which we quite expected, gave us a smile.

Allegra can get little over-enthusiastic in its terminology at times  (where any other research organisation sees trends, Allegra sees ‘mega-trends’ !)  and this book does get a little breathlessly excited in places – we hadn’t even got into the listings when we read: ‘to what extent does this venue deliver an amazing coffee experience?’, and ‘how does the coffee shop experience translate to exceptional levels of customer excitement?’

Steady on, folks, calm down.  You can't expect to get orgasmic about every time you walk into a coffee shop, and not everything can be 'amazing', or 'exceptional'.   And when everything is written about in superlatives, nothing stands out.  So here, perhaps, is a fair criticism – there is not a single adverse or questioning remark in the whole book.  Everything is ‘great’.

Now,  if a guide is going to say something is ‘great’, then it is twice as useful to the reader to say why it's great.  So, if the coffee is ‘excellent’, then why is it excellent?   So, where we have an abundance of venues which are described as ‘edgy’, ‘artsy’, ‘vibrant’, ‘artisanal’, (and in one case, heaven help us, ‘uber-cool’!)   we might just have been glad of a little more practical descriptive detail, which would have taken the whole thing to a different level... as in our favourite entry of all, which tells us that the Garden Café at Buckingham Palace serves coffees topped with a crown dusted in chocolate!  Now, that’s an entry to treasure, a perfect verbal snapshot.

Another slightly surprising thing is the subjective element – not only does the Guide actually rate venues, it does so twice, once for coffee and one for ‘overall’, and there is a even ‘Top 30’ of London coffee houses.  There are many pitfalls in setting oneself up to judge, so this may be considered a rather courageous thing to do… and as every venue seems to get marked at least four out of five, the exercise might even be considered superfluous.

(A quick second-check reveals that one venue does indeed get just three and a half for its coffee - oh dear, so much for the crown topping at Buck House!)

However, beside any minor critical observations, we must say that the very best thing about this book is the clear intention referred to in its introduction: ‘the aim is to encourage coffee-lovers to discover places they otherwise may never have known existed’.   Yes, that's an admirable intention, and it's a job well done.  So it's a good thing that this Guide has appeared.

Verdict?  Yes, spring twelve quid on it.  And keep it in mind as a useful gift for a coffee-fan, because it’ll go down very well.

London Coffee Guide, Allegra Strategies, £12