Outside Over Under Coffee's Ladbroke Grove cafe, there's an A-board that reads 'best in the west'. Indeed, the Antipodean speciality coffee company has other locations in Earl's Court, West Brompton and Wandsworth, all a little far west for me even now I have two wheels at my disposal. And it was on two wheels that I made it to Ladbroke Grove on Sunday morning, despite the intermittently inclement weather.
While I was back in Oxford for the weekend, I got to check out NewGround Coffee, a new-to-me coffee shop and roastery based two miles east of the city centre in Headington, not too far from the shark. This roastery opened about a year ago, although founders Joel and Dickon have been roasting for longer, but having missed their Selfridges pop-up shop, I found out about NewGround via Tom.
I grew up in a small, quiet village east of Oxford, where my parents still live. Up over the aptly named Ladder Hill is Wheatley, a larger village that has a few more shops, pubs and cafes. Among these is a specialty coffee shop with the excellent name of Bruin Café, which my parents told me about some months ago. And I finally managed to visit while I was with my parents at the weekend.
UPDATE. I was very sad to hear that as of spring 2022, BUSI has closed. They do hope to return in some form in another location in the not-too-distant future.
If anything was going to cut through the gloom of another grey and rainy Saturday in London, the pastel-hued design and thoughtful speciality coffee offering of BUSI stood a very good chance. The high-concept speciality coffee shop opened up in the summer — I heard about it thanks to Amelia's beautiful photos — on Great Portland Street, just north of Oxford Circus, and combines the respective passions for design and coffee of owners Anna and Emil. The name BUSI is the couple's term of endearment for each other, and in a 2020 world where joy can sometimes feel in short supply, it's hard not to warm to this philosophy.
