Oh The Irony …

For the last year, I’ve been based in an office in London close to St Paul’s cathedral. From a coffee viewpoint this is a good thing – there’s a very reliable Costas a few seconds from the building, a reasonably good independent – Fraiche – only slightly further (bizarrely Fraiche does a good coffee in the afternoon but is generally poor in the morning – which rather makes the point about the influence a barista has on what goes into the cup). Casting a wider web there’s a total of one Caffe Nero, two Costas and at least three Starbucks all within 1 5 minute walk.

Having been spoilt by these riches (or at least being certain of having a drinkable coffee around the corner) I ‘unfortunately’ had to spend most of this week at the head-office. From a coffee viewpoint this is bad. There’s a Costa and Starbucks which are both at least ten minutes on foot – but I simply don’t have time to spend 20+ minutes on the round trip. There’s coffee machines in the office, but as I’ve explained elsewhere it’s pretty much undrinkable muck that makes me ill. And there’s an espresso machine in the “Oasis” (the in-house canteen) but frankly how good is that likely to be?

To get things off to a bad start, on Tuesday I actually saw one of the automatic coffee machines being cleaned. Turns out that behind the panel there are three dispensers containing a powdered chocolate, powdered milk and – yes, you guessed it – powdered coffee. Not that I would have been drinking it anyway, but that really put me off the thought!

Not trusting that anyone in the canteen would have a clue how to use their espresso machine, I decided to make do without and just pick up a “decent” coffee on the way to and from home by stopping off at a garage which has a Costa bar (since I’ve been driving this week). That worked until Thursday when the craving during the day just got too much and I absolutely had to have a coffee. Having seen the ingredients in the automatic coffee machines – and knowing that in any event it would make me sick – I was going to have to risk the canteen’s espresso machine …

I was concerned about both the skill of the staff and the freshness of the beans (with free coffee from a machine in the corner, there’s not much uptake for the paid-for espresso-based drinks) but as it turned out the resulting drink was pretty good. I took it in a latte which is a little more forgiving – and just as well because even so it tasted a little over-extracted and ‘coarse’ – but overall I was quite impressed.

And the irony? Having dreaded being in the head office for the week, and “knowing” that I would struggle to get a decent coffee, it turns out that there’s a ‘good enough’ coffee readily available. And it’s cheap!