Harper-Thames has opinions and is prepared to defend them
By Harper-Thames
There are approximately forty-seven coffee shops within ten minutes walk of Shoreditch High Street station that describe themselves as speciality coffee, which is a term that has a technical meaning (coffee sourced, roasted, and brewed to standards established by the Speciality Coffee Association) and a cultural meaning (coffee served in a room with exposed brick and a playlist that sounds like someone’s older sibling made it in 2009), and which in Shoreditch refers to both simultaneously in varying proportions.
I have, over nine years of living adjacent to this density of coffee, developed views that I am prepared to commit to in writing, which is a thing you should only do about coffee if you are prepared to defend them to people who feel equally strongly in the opposite direction. I am prepared. Here we go.
The Hierarchy, As I See It
Allpress Espresso on Redchurch Street: the roastery is the coffee shop, the coffee is excellent and consistent, the space is large and usually has seats, and the flat whites have been a benchmark against which I measure all other flat whites for six years. This is the correct place to start if you have not been before. Climpson and Sons on Broadway Market (technically Hackney rather than Shoreditch but within the relevant orbit): the best filter coffee in East London, the space is intimate to the point of requiring either confidence or a booked table, and the seasonal roasts are the most interesting single-origin rotation in the area. Ozone Coffee Roasters on Leonard Street: excellent coffee, better food than any other coffee shop on this list, and a ground floor space that has afternoon light from the west that makes it the best place to sit with a long black and a laptop on a winter afternoon.
The Honourable Mentions and One Strong Disagreement
Caravan on Boundary Street is reliable and good and not interesting enough to seek out specifically. The coffee shop inside the White Cube gallery on Bermondsey Street (not Shoreditch, I know, but people ask) is inexplicably bad given its context. Dark Arts Coffee has the best branding in East London and coffee that I find polarising — very good when it is good, and occasionally over-roasted in ways that I note without rancour because the branding is excellent and I wish them well.
The Speciality Coffee Association industry data documents the sector nationally. Harper-Thames writes about Shoreditch at prat.uk.
SOURCE: https://bohiney.com
