What’s brewing?
We are, so we’re told, in the ‘third wave’ of London’s coffee culture. The Journal speaks to some of Marylebone’s coffee experts to find out what this means and what it is that makes our city’s approach to the drink so distinctive
Words: Clare Finney
A year or so ago the man pouring my cappuccino informed me that London had, in earnest, entered its ‘third wave’ coffee culture. Smiling, I mumbled in agreement, took my coffee and thanked him—the queue being too long (and myself too much of a Londoner) to ask just what he meant. I looked it up when I got home and, after half an hour’s worth of trawling through various blogs and articles, devised my own working definition. The days when “let’s grab a coffee” meant a cup of instant in the office kitchen, or a cafetière if you were fancy? That’s first wave coffee. The days when it meant a skinny-soy-cinnamon-syrup-latte-with-sprinkles from Starbucks, Costa et al? That’s second wave coffee. And the days like today, where your coffee shop and style is as much a part of your personal brand as your sunglasses and tote bag is, of course, third wave coffee: as intrinsic a part of the fabric of Marylebone as—sunglasses and canvas totes.
“I found it a real shock when I arrived in London in 2010,” recalls Prue Freeman, the Australian founder of Daisy Green coffee shop on Seymour Street. Coming from a land where mornings are considered the highlight of the day rather than a hardship to be endured, she found it depressing that Londoners viewed coffee as “more of a necessity than a chance for engagement”. Then she tasted it. Dark, bitter, designed to be mixed with a pint of milk and served to go, our coffee had none of the nuance of the drink she was used to at home—nor much of the service. “In Australia, the barista is a really respected position,” she continues. “The service is fast, but it’s friendly and high quality, and customers are loyal to their place and their barista.” Though London’s—and now urban Britain’s—third wave has roots in Italy and in Scandinavia, it is the antipodeans we have to thank for improving the quality of service and, almost as important, reducing the quantity of our milk.
In short, they brought us the flat white: a smooth, silky, diminutive cross between a cappuccino and a macchiato, the drink de jour of urban dwellers. With an average of 140ml of milk in a flat white compared to 230ml milk in a latte, the flat white nudged Brits toward better quality coffee, without pushing them out of their milk-loving comfort zone. “It’s still creamy, but with slightly more coffee flavours coming through than you would in a bucket of milk,” observes Prue. This was a drink we could drink more than once a day without feeling sickly; a drink in which we could appreciate coffee as a taste in its own right rather than a necessity; and a drink whose more streamlined nature left poor quality beans with nowhere to hide. Anyone looking to serve flat whites needed to source quality coffee and—because of the technical demands of the drink—a quality barista too.
Daisy Green is an Australian-inspired coffee shop. There are lamingtons, avo-heavy brunches and medium-bodied coffee roasted and blended in Sydney. Yet Marylebone’s thriving, diverse coffee scene owes as much to northern Europe and Scandinavia as it does to Down Under: something Francesca Pasquino of The Monocle Café is anxious to hit home. “We serve Allpress coffee, which is a New Zealand company, but we chose it because it was one of the best in London when we first opened.” That it was antipodean was irrelevant; as with everything else about Monocle, it was the quality that mattered. “Our founder Tyler Brûlé is Canadian, and the company started with his personal taste.”
There are Swedish pastries and Swiss wine, Japanese katsu sandwiches and Aperol spritzes. “We’re very focused on design, and have strong Japanese and Scandi influences—but the culture is more north European,” Francesca continues. “You come in to relax, read, socialise.” You do not come in to work—well, you can, but its mildly discouraged by the absence of wifi, the communal seating arrangements and the abundance of magazines, crying out to be read. You can takeaway, but they’d rather you have an espresso at the counter and exchange a few words with the barista if you’ve not got time to sit down. “The founder is quite obsessed with north Italy, where that is the thing.” Being Allpress brewed and for the most part Allpress trained, their coffee is Kiwi in style: you’ll get a good flat white, complete with latte art: the ‘drawing’ baristas create with the combination of espresso and fine foam on top of your coffee. But it’s at Monocle, that I first get the sense that the different coffee cultures in Marylebone are not as distinct as you’d think.
Self-consciously international
Of course, Monocle is at the extreme end of the scale, representing as it does a self-consciously international brand whose interests far transcend coffee. Yet even Arro, the Chiltern Street coffee shop whose staff, food and coffee blends are all proudly Italian, carries echoes of the antipodes and the UK. Order an espresso and you’ll be met with the Italian idea of the perfect espresso: a pitch-black shot topped with a light, creamy layer of crema that’s strong enough to bear a stick of sugar. Order a hot chocolate, and it’ll be melted Modica chocolate, served in the Italian style—so thick you can stand a spoon upright; yet cappuccino, lattes and flat white all come with latte art, because “presentation is important in London,” says manager Silvia Gerbino. “People take photos and post on social media and latte art is what they’ve come to expect.”
This is worth noting, not because latte art detracts from the quality of a coffee (if anything it adds to it, says Prue: “It only works if the milk has been steamed right and the espresso blended right and everything is done properly”.) It’s notable because it’s such a clear departure from the Italian cappuccino, which traditionally boasts a top of purest, whitest foam. In Souli, just down the road along Blandford Street, such a cappuccino lives on: Hella Souli and her business partner Amarildo Caka are insistent theirs be served “completely white—if it isn’t a white, it may as well be a latte, my Italian customers tell me. But I think in Italy a cappuccino is a coffee you play with: you have a pastry or a biscuit, you stir it, add chocolate, and it’s entertainment,” laughs Amarildo, noting that cappuccinos were initially designed to be enjoyed ‘in’ with a biscuit or cannoli for breakfast, rather than all day round, and on the go.
Still, this is London 2020. Italians can—do—balk at the fact, but cappuccinos and lattes are not just a morning thing here, nor do Londoners confine themselves to biscuits and pastry. “People come with a salad or sandwich and they get a latte! As a side for their sandwich!” Silvia exclaims. “In Italy, a big cup of coffee with milk is already a meal.” Over my white-capped cappuccino at Souli, Amarildo jokes that at this time—4pm—Italians would be enjoying a glass of wine or amaretto, not a milky coffee. “You’d never get Italians drinking coffee this late in the afternoon,” he tells me. For better or worse, the legacy of the chains is that coffee is consumed in all forms, at all hours, with all manner of foods to accompany it, so that my best friend thinks nothing of having a bag of crisps with a mocha at 5pm.
The other, less benign legacy, of course, is coffee to go: the paper cups, lids and aura of efficiency that follow a businessperson on the coffee round. “Too busy to stop, too busy to drink without also working,” says the aroma that wafts delectably in their purposeful wake. Monocle is not the only coffee shop trying to counter this; Souli and Ole & Steen both place a subtle emphasis on drinking and eating in, with the latter—a Danish company—encouraging the Scandinavian practice of taking time out in the afternoon for ‘fika’: socialising over cake and coffee. “We bake and serve cakes all day, but we make them more prominent in the afternoon,” says Ruta Martinsone, Ole & Steen’s UK operations manager. Indeed, one of the things she likes about Ole & Steen in London as opposed to Sweden or Denmark is that customers here tend to come in for their cake, rather than buying a selection to take back to work or home.
It’s why the coffee is so important. Though Ole & Steen was born as a bakery (a lagkagehuset) its coffee offering has gone from strength to strength as it has ventured into London. Indeed, it is a London roastery, Modern Standard, that roasts the beans for both their British and their Danish branches: “A light medium roast, that suits every palate and goes well with pastries and cake.” “Coffee is a big part of our business and we take it very seriously,” Ruta continues, “putting a lot of care into how we steam our milk and grind our beans.” Like all things Scandi, Ruta says, the aim is perfect simplicity: there are no syrups, no chocolate or cinnamon sprinkles. This is good coffee traded direct from farmers, roasted for a north European palate and prepared by baristas who have been extensively trained.
It’s not just the cakes that convince customers to stay. People are lured in by the lagkage, but they stay for the environment. They stay for the neutral palette, the clean lines, the cool yet comfy chairs, designed to relax in rather than work from. That Ole & Steen Marylebone retains the chilled vibe that it does, despite being a cinnamon bun’s throw from Oxford Street, has as much to do with its design as it does its christianshavner cake, Ruta continues. “It’s the perfect place to relax and unwind from a busy day.”
No compromise
Of course, takeaway customers remain a big part of their trade, just as they are at every coffee shop on Marylebone. It is, after all, a centre of business. Yet with an atmosphere that’s more hygge than hurried, places like Ole & Steen and Monocle—even takeaway set ups like Arro and Daisy Green—can instill some of their chill into frazzled commuters. “We’re all about print—taking care of process,” says Francesca at Monocle. “It’s not just about pressing a button,” agrees Ruta. “In Australia, even hole-in-the-wall places are often family run, with friendly baristas,” says Prue. “They don’t compromise just because it’s quick.”
In Italy, from where Francesca hails, they don’t even really have takeaway coffees. “I have seen this in Milan, where it is more about fashion and brands, and in train stations—but in other towns, even Rome, people sit in the seating area,” confirms Amarildo. The Roman roastery and coffee shop Sant’Eustachio, whose coffee Souli imports and upon whose shop Souli is roughly modelled, has “a few paper cups on standby at the back, but they’d rather not sell you them. I wish I could directly replicate that culture over here.”
I am bewitched by his description of Sant’Eustachio—small, convivial, family run—and drawn in further by my coffee, whose uniquely rich and nutty flavour he puts down to the beans roasting “the old fashioned way, over wooden logs”. I make a mental note to go if I find myself in Rome, but I can’t in all honesty see it working in Marylebone where, if my coffee shop tour is anything to go by, multiculturalism is king. Amarildo knows this. Much as he loves the Italian commitment to authenticity, that “they don’t get a flat white—the Italian definition of a good quality coffee is a double espresso with enough crema to hold the sugar”, he loves the flexibility that comes with being in London, where flat white and the sort of crema-topped double espressos an Italian would write home about can coexist under the same roof.
“Australian, New Zealand, America, Italy, Turkey, Scandinavia—there are so many different coffee cultures, and so many ways of doing coffee,” he muses. “But London has developed its own bubble. Everyone is different, but everyone is connected to each other.” If that’s a wave, and this is the coffee that comes of it, I’m diving in.