The Caffeine Chronicles Part IV: Updated London Espresso Bar Favourites

Update: This post is now 14 years old. Check out my regularly updated London specialty coffee guide for a more comprehensive, and up-to-date, list of my current favourite coffee shops.

It's been over a year since I mapped my favourite espresso bars in central London. Since then, I've discovered a number of new places and my coffee standards have also risen — latte art is no longer sufficient to win me over! So, I've updated my previous map and come up with a list of my current top ten favourite espresso bars. Four were on my 2011 list and six are new.

The Caffeine Chronicles Part III: Prufrock Coffee Review

Update: For a more recent review of Prufrock, check out this blog post.

On the way back to the office from DoCaSA on Thursday, I'd planned to stock up on coffee at the Espresso Room but noticed Prufrock Coffee, hidden behind a market stall on Leather Lane. Prufrock has been on my coffee to-do list for a long time but I had never got round to visiting. 

The Caffeine Chronicles Part II: AeroPress Love

I used to be able to function on a single espresso per day but now, I usually need a second caffeine hit. I've been very pleased with my Bodum French Press, but there are a few minor problems with it: 1) it's messy and takes time to clean and 2) it's rather fragile and my overzealous attempts to clean the grounds into the bin have resulted in two broken French presses in as many years. 

When looking into other options, the one that stood out was the AeroPress, which falls halfway between a cafetière and a filter coffee maker. I'd seen one for sale in the super-hip Everyman Espresso in the East Village last year but never got round to finding out more.

After a bit of online research and a test drink at Sensory Lab, I decided to go ahead and buy one. I ordered from Cream Supplies, and was able to test it out this morning using Square Mile's Sertão coffee, which lived up to the promise of the "intense sweetness of rich toffee and creamy milk chocolate" in the flavour notes. 

A lot of reviews talk about the "cleanness" of the taste of AeroPress coffee compared to coffee prepared in a French Press, and this is true — there was no sludge left in the bottom of my mug but the coffee still had a rich, smooth, flavoursome taste.

AeroPress starter kit

In the kit, you get the AeroPress (two plastic cylinders--the plunger which slides inside the chamber — and a cap, which holds a flat, circular filter and which twists onto the bottom of the chamber), 350 paper filters, a stirrer, a funnel and the scoop. 

Before you start the brewing process, you put a filter into the cap and screw it onto the bottom of the chamber and rest on top of a mug. Some of the reviews I read suggested running hot water through first to warm up the mug and lessen the effect the paper filter will have on your coffee. 

Next, you put two scoops of ground coffee into the base of the chamber, fill up to the number two mark with hot but not boiling water, stir for ten seconds and then insert the plunger, applying slow, steady pressure for about 30 seconds until the plunger reaches the bottom of the chamber. 

This is supposed to be the equivalent of a double espresso but it's not the kind of espresso I like so instead, I make an Americano by topping up my mug with hot water. You then twist off the cap over your dustbin and a neat "puck" of coffee falls straight out; you need to give the bottom of the plunger a quick rinse but everything else is self-cleaning. Easy!

L: Put a filter in the cap, screw the cap onto the chamber.
R: The AeroPress set-up and some Square Mile coffee

The system works by using air pressure to push the coffee through the microfilter, which means the coffee doesn't come into contact with anything apart from the filter paper (unlike the French press, where the metal plunger does touch the coffee). More specifically, as they say on the AeroPress website:

Using the ideal water temperature and gentle air pressure brewing yields rich flavor with lower acidity and without bitterness. Total immersion brewing results in uniform extraction of the ultimate in full coffee flavor. Other coffee makers drip hot water on bed of grounds, over extracting at the center and under extracting at the edge.

Finito!

I couldn't take any photos while I was making my coffee but if you want to know more about how the AeroPress works and to see it in action, check out this YouTube video of Gwilym Davies, World Barista Champion of 2009, doing a demo.

The Caffeine Chronicles Part I: The Department of Coffee & Social Affairs review
The Caffeine Chronicles Part III: Prufrock Coffee review

The Caffeine Chronicles Part I: Department of Coffee and Social Affairs, Leather Lane (CLOSED)

Update: This Department of Coffee and Social Affairs location is now permanently closed, but you can still find them in Carnaby Street, Soho.

It is now the Easter bank holiday weekend in the UK and I should probably be celebrating chocolate but instead, I have a few coffee-related posts planned in my new Caffeine Chronicles series. This is the first, part II is here, part III is here and this is part IV.

Today, I needed some ground coffee for my new caffeine toy, so I hiked down to Clerkenwell to try out a new (to me) coffee shop on Leather Lane: the Department of Coffee and Social Affairs. I liked the look of the place and a promising Time Out review suggested there would be high levels of caffeine satisfaction.

Lunchtime at the Dept. of Coffee & Social Affairs

Heads Will Roll

The joke was on me this morning. No, not an April Fool's Day joke--just a simple reading comprehension error. I had a ticket to a preview screening of Headhunters, the latest Scandi-crime thriller, at the Ritzy in Brixton.

Headhunters is based on the book of the same name by Jo Nesbø, whose series of books starring the flawed-but-brilliant Norwegian detective Harry Hole, are usually seen with stickers proclaiming Nesbø as "the next Stieg Larsson." I read Headhunters a few months ago and although I quite liked it, I preferred the Harry Hole books. I guess "brilliant headhunter who uses interviews as a means of obtaining information he can use to burgle the candidates" is a more original character than "brilliant but troubled detective."

The headhunter in question is Roger Brown (Aksel Hennie) who, as he keeps telling us, is only 1.68 m, and has a serious case of short-man syndrome. He's convinced his beautiful, tall girlfriend Diana (Synnøve Macody Lund) will leave him for a taller man and to compensate, lives in a house he can't afford and buys her trinkets that are pricey enough to give his bank manager a heart attack. 

To supplement his income, he has a little burglary racket going: whenever he interviews someone for a job (and these jobs are usually CEOs for multinational companies), he subtly gets the candidate to reveal whether they have any expensive art, whether the wife/cleaner will be at home and which alarm system they use. His buddy Ove, who works at one of the alarm companies, then disables the alarm for a few minutes, allowing Roger to go inside and steal the art, replacing it with a fake. Ove nips over to Sweden to sell it on the black market and everyone wins.

But Roger soon meets his match in the form of Clas Greve (Nikolaj Coster-Waldau), a tall, handsome Dutchman whom Roger wants to place in the top spot at the company of one of his clients. He may also be sleeping with Diana — oh, and it seems there may also be a temptingly valuable Rubens painting lurking in Clas's aunt's flat. It should be a simple snatch-and-grab operation for Roger but things soon spiral out of control and he is forced to go on the run, wondering if he can trust anyone in his life.

Headhunters is hard-going and it's very violent but it is also pretty funny, or at least darkly comic. There is a lot of blood and gore and bashed-in faces, but there are lighter moments, including a disgusting but also rather funny (odd) scene that, echoing my earlier reading material, was a little too scatological (I'm not sure if it was worse in the book or the film; both were pretty bad). Equally, there are two obese twin policemen, who reminded me a lot of Thompson and Thomson, who add some levity to the film. The plot is as twisty as some of those mountain back roads shown in the film. 

Having read the book, I knew what was coming but I can imagine that some might find it a little too convoluted. The other problem is that none of the characters is remotely sympathetic; Roger, the anti-hero, is arrogant, greedy, selfish and insecure and for much of the film, I didn't really want him to have a happy ending. Not that I was rooting for anyone else either. Still, the unlikeable characters annoyed me less in the film than the book; maybe this is because I only had to put up with them for 1h40 in the film, or maybe the book's first-person narration by Roger was too much for me.

Overall, Headhunters is a slick, fast-paced and clever thriller. It isn't for the faint-hearted — or those who are about to eat — but I thought the blackly-comic and quirky scenes brought a nice balance to the ambition, gore and violence.

Not So Funny Games

Plenty of contestants, many of whom will "roar [their] way to the top." Shouting. Back-stabbing. A huge prize is at stake but there can only be one winner. No, I'm not talking about the new series of The Apprentice, but Gary Ross's new film adaptation of the first book in Suzanne Collins's hugely popular Hunger Games trilogy. 

The Hunger Games is, in part, a biting satire on our reality-TV-obsessed society (not dissimilar to Fifteen Million Merits, the second part of Charlie Brooker's Black Mirror mini-series), but with a huge dollop of bleak, dystopian futurism — oh, and a healthy serving of courageous young female protagonist. Yes, with hindsight, it's easy to see the appeal of The Hunger Games.

In the not-too-distant future, Panem (formerly known as the US of A) consists of 12 districts, each known for its own special expertise, ruled over by the Capitol. As a punishment for an attempted rebellion, each year every district must offer up two "tributes" (young people, a boy and a girl aged between 12 and 18) to take part in the Hunger Games, a Battle Royale-style contest in which the contestants are placed in an arena filled with dangers and are then forced to fight one another to the death, until one victor remains. 

The people of the Capitol, with their mad-coloured hair and skin and crazy fashion sense (Princess Beatrice-inspired hats, and so on) watch the the footage, place bets on their favourite contestants and can even "sponsor" them, sending life-saving food or medicine into the arena.

The contestants are chosen by random ballot but young people can also opt for a tessera, which means an extra entry in the ballot in exchange for more food for their family. The movie opens on the eve of the 74th Hunger Games and Katniss Everdeen (Jennifer Lawrence) and her best friend Gale (Liam Hemsworth), who live in District 12, in which the main industry is coal mining. 

The district is one of the poorest but Katniss and Gale are great hunters and manage to (illegally) hunt enough food to feed their families after the death of their fathers. They think about running away but Katniss worries about what would happen to her younger sister Primrose (Willow Shields). It is the first year that Prim will be entered in the ballot but Katniss has worked hard to ensure her sister has never had to take a tessera and she assures Prim that they will be fine. But Primrose's name is, of course, drawn out, and Katniss volunteers to take her place — the first ever volunteer from District 12. The male tribute is Peeta Mellark (Josh Hutcherson), a baker's son.

Katniss barely has time to say goodbye to Gale, her mother (who has been suffering from severe PTSD after the death of her husband and who isn't any help in keeping the family together) and Prim (who hands her a "lucky" mockingjay pin) before she is whisked onto a train with Peeta, their chaperone Effie Trinket (a nearly unrecognisable Elizabeth Banks) and their mentor Haymitch (Woody Harrelson), the only living victor from District 12. 

For a girl who grew up without hot water or electricity, the super-fancy high-speed train is fascinating for Katniss, who is starting to fully understand the implications of her decision. Effie is a representative of the Capitol and has ulterior motives, Haymitch is usually drunk and how can she trust her fellow tribute Peeta when they are rivals, even if he did give her bread once when she was starving? And as she learns about the "career" tributes in Districts 1 and 2, who train all of their lives for the "honour" of representing their district in the Hunger Games, she wonders how she can ever compete.

But with a bow in her arms, she is Artemis, and after growing annoyed when the game makers, led by Wes Bentley's Seneca Crane, ignore her during her "audition" in favour of a hog roast, she soon gains their attention by shooting an arrow straight into the apple in the pig's mouth and is promptly given a Spinal Tap-style rating of 11 out of 10. She also has an awesome stylist, Cinna (Lenny Kravitz), who doesn't just "make her pretty," but dresses her in a series of stunning outfits that no one can forget. After the games start, though, she is pretty much on her own and with 23 enemies, many of whom are bigger, stronger and faster, Katniss will need to rely on her wits as well as her mad bow skillz if she is going to make it out alive.

Without wishing too sound too much of a fangirl, The Hunger Games is one of the best films I've seen this year. In part, this is down to the casting. Jennifer Lawrence, of Winter's Bone fame (where she also played a real survivor — the determined teenager Ree, who has to protect her younger siblings in the face of an absent, drug-dealing father and a depressed mother), puts in a really strong performance as Katniss and does justice to the young heroine described in the books. Even when she isn't being likeable, we sympathise and we understand her fear and her determination. 

With so many characters and so much plot to get through, some of the other actors, such as Kravitz, seem rather unused, although I did think Harrelson made the perfect Haymitch. Hemsworth and Hutchershon stood out less and Alexander Ludwig's Cato, the arrogant, blonde jock from District 2, was pretty stereotypical. Some of the female contestants were more interesting, like Clove (Isabelle Furhman), the District 2 mean girl.

At 2h20, The Hunger Games is long but it is action-packed and at no point was I bored; on the contrary, for the first time since I saw The Social Network, I would have liked the film to go on, although there will be sequels, presumably, for that. The film was a very faithful adaptation of the book, unsurprising, perhaps, as Collins co-wrote the screenplay and given what the fans might do if the movie veered too far away from the source material. The Hunger Games is no sappy teen love story — it is scary, both in the ideas it presents and in the events in the arena, and compelling and well worth a watch.

48 Hours in...Bristol

The train prices to Paris and even Edinburgh were too expensive this week and so I ended up in Bristol for a mini-city-break. The last time I went to Bristol was in 2001 on a university open day and I liked the place enough to make it my safety choice, but looking back, all I really remember of that day is my trip to TopShop. 

I was pleasantly surprised to find that the city offered several nice-looking independent coffee bars and even a couple of secret speakeasy cocktail bars — my main requirements for any holiday destination — and I was impressed. Here are some of my recommendations.


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