Surprisingly Good …

Ran out of my Square Mile espresso beans at the weekend (another tale of the last 18 months that I shall tell at some point).

I have a bag of Peets House Blend in the freezer (oh the heresy) but don’t particularly want to keep grabbing it out – probably wait until I’m next going to be home for a few days, then take it out and finish it off.

And, being the weekend, I didn’t have the option of popping to Monmouth on the way home and picking up some of their beans.

Instead, on the spur of the moment, I grabbed a tin of Illy beans from my local Waitrose (the black tin, denoting darker roast). Normally I avoid buying any beans from the supermarket, because I’ve not had good results in the past, but I needed something and I certainly wasn’t picking up anything that was pre-ground …

To my amazement, the Illy is pretty damn good. I suppose I shouldn’t be that surprised – Illy’s a widely available brand for a reason, and I like a cup of Illy-based latte from Manon – but I was never all that fussed before when using Illy pre-ground. It wasn’t bad by any stretch, but nor was it anything to write home about.

I guess it just underlines the difference between freshly ground and pre-ground coffee … a lesson for us all?

Manon … Manoff …

Note that I haven’t really posted here in some time; oh well, it’s been a slow … erm … 18 months.

*ahem*

Easing back into things, I wanted to note that my preferences for different coffee shops – and even (slightly) for my favourite tipple – have changed a little over this time.

When last we spoke, my favourite “chain” coffee shop was Costa Coffee, followed (probably) by Caffe Nero then Starbucks; and my favourite drink, a medio latte with extra shot (or grande at Nero / Starbucks). The monumental (not really) changes came about for two reasons; a new shop opening, and my deciding that I was drinking too much milk.

The last 18 months have been quite eventful; I decided to get a hold of my health, lost nearly 2 stone (roughly 28 lbs or 15 kilos for our American cousins and those who work in metric) and ran a couple of half-marathons. As part of this process I decided I was drinking too much milk in my coffee, but having been corrupted by lattes didn’t want to go back to an americano as my day-in-day-out drink … so (ingeniously) I decided instead to go low-fat and have skinny lattes instead. Like I said, genius.

Only problem with this is that – oddly – Costa’s skinny latte isn’t actually all that good. Following the opening of a Nero opposite my office – pretty much equidistant to the Costa – whilst I was convalescing me knee after a skiing accident (don’t ask), I discovered that Nero’s skinny latte is actually very good. Better than their ‘regular’ latte, in fact. And because they make their coffee a little stronger, there’s no need for an extra shot – so it’s actually a little cheaper than Costa. And they have a better loyalty scheme than Costa (see here). So my go-to drink nowadays is a grande skinny latte from Caffe Nero. So there.

Anyway, that’s not actually what I wanted to talk about. No, the actual point of this post was simply to give a shout-out to Manon Cafe on Fleet Street (that’s the store at the top of the page, shame that their photographer was so half-arsed that the picture of the shop isn’t level, but hey ho …). Selling Illy coffee, and giving away a free belgian chocolate with each drink – if it was a little closer (or had a loyalty card) it’d be my coffee shop of choice.

So there we go; back in the saddle and (hopefully) back for the long haul. We shall see …

 

What IS It With Illy?

I’m confused by Illy, I don’t mind admitting.

My local supermarket is a Waitrose, and they stock four Illy products: box of ESE (red) pods, half- and full-size tins of “red” Illy, and full-size tin of “black” Illy.

Why the confusion, you ask? Well, it’s a simple thing – they don’t tell you what the difference is between red and black tins!

I don’t think it would be too much to ask if they put something on the tin – rather than both having the description “Caffe Macinato” – but was flabergasted to find that if you go and look on their website there’s still nothing!

I mean, how hard do they want to make it?!

UPDATE

To be fair, Illy appear to have added some words to their tins, and updated their website, so that the difference between red and black tins is clear (medium roast vs dark roast for anyone who still wasn’t sure). This may have been necessitated because they’re now selling tins of whole beans and two styles of ground coffee (espresso & “drip”) in medium, dark roast & decaf, together with a “moka” grind for stove-top pots. Hmmm …

FURTHER UPDATE

I’ve been reminded that there’s also “pink” in the UK, which is for filter machines and catefieres.