coffee, coffee, then more coffee

friday 30th july.

my quest for the finest coffee in london took me to the caffeine triangle again today.

i had an hour before i had to drive over to parliament square for a shoot and i found a parking space on golden square with surprisingly little effort.

the challenge was on... to drink a coffee at each of the three points of the caffeine triangle and to make a comparison.

so... firstly i dropped in to the beak street branch of fernandez & wells

and had a stumpy. just about perfection

then i swung into caffe e vida

and had a latte with an extra shot. hmmm, nowhere near as good.

finally i skulked across golden square to the nordic bakery

and had a strong latte with a home made biscuit. very nice.

i must admit that i had the right old 'hattie jacques' by this point, but i was in a very good position to rate all three places having just sampled three coffees in under an hour.

my findings are:

fernandez and wells: the best coffee. hands down the winner of my best coffee award.

cracking food too. v friendly staff and a nice vibe.

on the downside i would say it's a little cramped and not the sort of place you can linger or particularly relax.

vida e caffee: the coffee is good, just not as good as the other two places. it's possibly the quietest of the three and has lots of seating and perhaps best of all, lots of good magazines and newspapers to read. free chocolate with coffee, friendly staff and they do a loyalty card.

the nordic bakery: very good coffee, very cool place even after 3 years it still seems fresh and stylish. no music, beautiful interior and definitely the sort of place you can linger for a long long time. the staff are sweet and the food is very... well... nordic i suppose.

in summary it depends what you're after. if it's purely a great coffee head to f&w. if you want to chill, head to the nordic. if you want to relax and read some expensive magazines and people watch, plump for vida e caffe

by the way, as soon as i got to my shoot maybe 30 minutes after leaving golden square, they offered me a coffee straight away !... i settled for a glass of water.