bitful

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My two absolutely most worstest traits of my character are Procrastination and Perfectionism. The result? If I could have it my way, things would never get done.

So I'm just going to go ahead, OK?

NB: for the purpose of the coffee-tasting experiment I am going to stop using mouthwash. I apologise for those who come into close contact with at work.

NB too: for the purpose of the fight against Procrastination and Perfectionism I shall not attempt to hyperlink the hyperlinkable. Go Google yourselves.

Here we go then. Central London coffee guide: I aim at being unfaithful to my grande white americano to go from Caffè Nero and be tempted by other brews.

Monday morning: McDonalds. Three doors down from work (good). Recently replaced their perfectly acceptable filter coffee (£0.94) in which you could add as many tiny milk cartons as you wish (six, please) with some Kenko ground-on-the-spot pretentiousness with warm slighly frothy milk (£1.09). Listen, if I cared for good coffee I would not have left Italy. Give us back the dishwater, please. Straws ubiquitous (sp?).

Monday lunchtime: Nero. Across Trafalgar Square from work (good, unless there's a parade to welcome back the athletes from the Olympics and Parolympics. Or a bunch of bananas in your way. Or a Thunderbird). £1.70. Plus: loyalty card (one free coffee for every nine you buy) brings price down to £1.53. Good strong coffee with an intense aroma that on a couple of occasions perfect strangers next to me at the pedestrian lights commented on. Or maybe they were just coming on at me. Coffee cup put into another cup as standard. Straws on display in most branches.

Yesterday morning: Wild Bean Café at my local BP petrol station. Long-winded pompous name that translates into 'Half-asleep Polish girl pushing button on coffee machine that does the rest' (after 6am). Before 6am, the machine is turned toward the customers, who get the privilege of pushing the button themselves. And adding six mini-milks. Plus: you get 6 Nectar points for a £1.59 16oz cup, which means that with only 84 cups of coffee you get a free pass for a day for two persons for Cannons gym (see? coffee is good for you). Must learn how to ask for a straw in Polish.

Yesterday lunchtime: Costa, first floor of Borders bookshop, Trafalgar Square. £1.95 for equivalent-sized cup. Comes with corrugated holder/insulator (that unfortunately does not cover the bottom of the cup, hence slighlty singed pinkie). We are not impressed. Dusty straws on display had definitely seen better days. What, surely I'm not the only one drinking coffee with a straw? [looks around] Ok then.

To be continued…

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First part here.

Yesterday morning: Pret, Trafalgar square. 1 pound 25 pence for similar size (as far as I could tell - I left the empty cup at work so I can't check now). Plus: there's only one size, and only one price, for "Coffee: filter or americano". Unfortunately, there also seems to be one kind of coffee, as I asked for an americano (espresso topped with hot water) and while I was looking for my money it was ready suspiciously quickly. Coffee's good though, smooth and sweet. Plus, I read on the cup, Pret weighs its cappuccinos, to make sure that there's the correct quantity of air in them. Velvety ones for the customer, bad ones for the sink.

Yesterday lunchtime, Starbucks, the Strand. 1 pound 75 for a "Grande" (read: "Medium" - which at 16 fl oz is larger than all the 12 oz coffees I had so far this week. Totally unimpressed by the coffee quality. A bit flustered by being served by three different people (lady took my order and cashed in, younger lady wrote "W" for white on cup and pushed button on machine, gentleman poured milk in and put cup on counter in front of me). Plus: several shakers next to the straws, napkins and sugar counter mean you can add chocolate powder, cinnamon, vanilla and ginger to your coffee. Perhaps best not all at the same time.

To be continued…

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Parts one and two

Yesterday morning: filter coffee from the permanent pot at the gym. At 7am this is best described as a lovely near-transparent weak brew that my Frensh shum Anne would call 'Jus de chaussettes' (socks juice). Unfortunately, should you visit the gym after work you are almost guaranteed to find the exact same glass pot on the hot plate, whereby the coffee will have concentrated to a malodorous dark brown liquid not unlike mud. In looks and taste.
Plus: it's free. However, I suggest refraining from dividing your monthly membership fee by the number of times you actually show up at the gym (and no, going purely to top up your tan on the sunbed does not count), unless you want to find out that it's really eleven quid a go.

Yesterday lunchtime: Coffee Republic, the Strand. I went in for the very first time, to find some high-ceiling terracotta and stainless steel rather pleasant industrial design. Busy branch but very good teamwork. A bit too organised, to the point of writing codes for each drink with a thick blue marker. On ceramic cups too, just under the lip. There has to be a European Directive forbidding it - unless they are using a special food colouring marker, which I doubt.
1 pound 75 for a large size americano (three shots of espresso, just like at Nero's). Nice and strong but not as fragrant as Nero's. Plus: a very long snazzy thick red straw that shouts Look-at-me-I'm-unable-to-walk-back-to-work-and-drink-normally-without-pouring-half-down-my-shirt!!! There. Now you know why.

To be continued…

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Parts one, two and three.

Quick, quick, I am late for work! Damn Neil from Comptons and his five year managament birthday last night with all drinks at one pound fifty…

Friday morning: no coffee. No food or drink for two hours after seeing my dentist (of which more later).

Friday lunchtime: no coffee. No time for lunch either, for that matter.

Friday afternoon: three vanilla diet cokes to stay awake - I never realised how hooked I was on the caffeine.

Saturday morning: coffee at Ikea. Full English breakfast for 99 pence, actually, with free refills of coffee (or tea or hot chocolate). Small cups = many refills. Small "milk" cartons that boast "Tastes like real milk!". Oh, because in reality it is…?

Saturday lunchtime: big 3-cup Italian caffettiera of decaff Illy at Dr B. Sunday morning: ditto. And Sunday lunchtime. Aaaah.

Sunday afternoon: cappuccino at the Portuguese-run café under the arches behind Crash. Absolutely not worth remembering - unlike the good company.

Monday morning: Benji, Villiers Street, Embankment. Got in, asked for a large coffee, was poured something from a filter pot into a polystirene cup, shown towards the till and paid (69p for 450ml!) before I could even say "white, please" or ask for a straw, so I had to wait until I sat down at my desk to start savouring it. Removed the lid and saw that there was milk in it. Eastern European mind reading? Milk as standard, like it or not? Coffee not unpleasant for filter, and for that price. Very practical location, half a minute from the gym and 4 minutes from work. Might become my next favourite.

Monday lunchtime: AMT, open air stand on Neal Street, Covent Garden. One pound thirty for a 12oz cup, freshly ground espresso with hot water. Could not see how many shots there were, tasted like barely one. Resisted yummy pretzels as I had just munched on my chicken and tomatoes. And pizza and icecream the night before on the way home from the Vauxhall Tavern (it is dangerously becoming a fattening Sunday night habit).

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Parts one, two, three and four.

God I miss Nero, but as the Great Icelandic Man used to say, 'I've started so I'll finish'.

Yesterday morning: the coffee chain that I used to work in and that I shall refrain from identifying out of politeness (I think I mentioned here that I used to manage five Korean ladies and a couple of adorable mutant mice, immune to most poisons known to ratkind, and very fond of crisps and biscotti).
The most expensive coffee so far (1 pound 95, 16oz, three espresso shots). Surprisingly, not as intense as I remember it, and not at all followed by the buzz one would expect from so much caffeine. Don't take my word for it though, I might very well be biased. Not the happiest period in my professional life, remember?

Yesterday lunchtime: Eat, Bedford Street, Covent Garden. Very stylish brown paper cup, black logo in big bold letters. Haven't tasted their food yet, I hear they do nice soups. The same cannot be said for their coffee. 1 pound 60, 16oz cup, not bad. At first the sight of two big help-yourself thermic jugs of skimmed and full fat organic milk made me rejoice in the anticipation of finally having my coffee as milky as I like it (=excessively). Then I tasted it, and it turned out to be the very same diarrhoeic discharge that my gym gives out for free. Filter. Burnt. Could not even finish it, and that's a first around here. Poured it down the sink at work. I swear I heard the sink spit it back with a loud raspberry.

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Parts one, two, three, four and five.

Yesterday morning: Burger King, Charing Cross station. £1.09 for a 12oz cup of what is basically Nescafé with a dash of hot water - for the price of a jar of coffee powder.

Yesterday lunchtime: Carluccio's, Neal St, Covent Garden. I had no choice but to try it after hearing so much praise about it, and… yes, very smooth, and the colours and smells in the shop (and the staff's smiles) are vibrant and are undoubtedly part of the customer experience. You do feel special.

However, by the time I (guiltily) walked past my regular Nero on the way back to work, I'd already gulped it down (largest size is a meagre 12oz, for £1.60) almost without noticing it. In fact, the blend felt so smooth that I had to stop at the newly opened 24-hour Tesco (formerly Europa Foods) in Trafalgar Square to get myself half a litre of chilled vanilla diet coke to keep my eyes open through a tedious afternoon.

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Parts one, two, three, four, five and six.

Having run out of places to get my coffee, today I visited Pret and Starbucks again, to check how their coffee is made and how many shots there are in a large cup.

This morning: americano at Pret, the Strand. Turns out it's all done by machine, which is fed coffee beans from the top. Two trickles of coffee in a 12oz cup. Machine operator must have got up from the wrong side of the bed and kept slamming his drinks around. Picked up my straw quietly and tiptoed out of the shop.

Today lunchtime I went to check how Starbucks' americano is made (exactly the same as at Pret - all automatic) and I noticed a cheaper "brew of the day" for £1.60 for 16oz. Unfortunately, "of the day" probably stands for "last Friday". Dark, roasted over-boiled filter yukkiness. The kitchen sink now drains perfectly well.

Summary of results tomorrow.

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My coffee table:

Shop	Branch	Price	Size (oz)	Price per litre	Mode
Shop	Branch	Price	Size (oz)	Price per litre	Mode
McDonalds	Whitehall	£1.09	12	£3.07	Kenko, machine
Nero	St Martin's Lane	£1.70	16	£3.59	3 espresso shots
Wild Bean Café at BP	Tooting Bec	£1.59	16	£3.36	machine
Costa	Trafalgar Square	£1.95	16	£4.12	espresso
Pret	Villiers St	£1.25	12	£3.52	2 machine shots
Starbucks	Strand	£1.75	16	£3.70	2 machine shots
My gym	Villiers st	0	n.a.	0	filter
Coffee Republic	Strand	£1.75	16	£3.70	3 espresso shots
Benjy	Villiers St	£0.75	16	£1.59	filter
AMT	Neal St	£1.30	12	£3.66	1 espresso shot
'Evil Empire' ;-)	Balham	£1.95	16	£4.12	3 espresso shots
EAT.	Bedford St	£1.60	16	£3.38	filter
Burger King	Charing Cross Station	£1.09	12	£3.07	Nescafé, machine
Carluccio's	Neal St	£1.60	12	£4.51	2 espresso shots
Starbucks	Strand	£1.60	16	£3.38	filter

I'll stick with Nero's. Strong yet smooth, with quality which is consistent throught its very many branches.

Good value for money, for a 3 espresso shots americano. Better value for money if you use Nero's loyalty card and have your 10th coffee on the house. Even better value for money if, like me, you keep your completed loyalty cards to use when you've got time to enjoy your (more expensive choice of) coffee (say a fancy latte, or a cappuccino) on the premises.

Can't wait to go to work now!

java9

Stop press.

Benjy now rebranded its filter coffee. Big a-board outside the shop asking people why they should pay more across the street (where there's a Starbucks).

White polystyrene cups now decorated with warm brown and blue pattern and a LTC (=Love The Coffee) logo.

Price for a large coffee up 10p to £0.75. Coffee still tasting not too burnt. Great value for money, and on the way from tube station and work. Good for a quick fix.

Coffee table amended accordingly.

java10

Almost two months from the conclusion of my survey of Central London coffee shops, I can certainly say things have changed.

It must have been some sort of aversion therapy, like when they ask you to smoke cigarette after cigarette, changing brands continuously in order to become disgusted and eventually quit.

Instead of two large americanos from Nero's, I now only have one large filter coffee from Benjy's (75p) in the morning, and I skip the one after lunch. Daily savings: £2.85. Monthly savings: £53.90 (as I work five days a week and there are on average 4.33 weeks per month and yes, that takes into account the fact that every tenth coffee at Nero's is free).

At home I went through my supplies of instant coffee, instant decaff, espresso, decaff espresso and barley mix, and only kept one (espresso) in its fascinating dosacaffè that you will find in each and every Italian household.

I now have one espresso in the morning, then switch to tea, then to herbal tea after 8pm.

So why the heck is it that over the last week I slept an average of four hours a night?