Category: Cafes

Café Ole – a working brew

Café Ole plays jolly, sunny, house-ish music with chiming piano, in contrast to the overcast day and heavy roadworks outside. Intermittent drilling adds to the soundtrack. There’s a large counter that juts half way out into the café, with an enormous coffee machine and an impressive selection of cakes, and the interior is bright, warm and welcoming after the gloom outside. An old man sits in the window, dozing, his head nodding towards his knees. Every so often it dips too low and he pulls it up sharply, then starts dozing again. 

Check out the mug

There are plenty of people here, but there’s only conversation from one table because the rest of us are on our own, most with laptops and one with a headset too. Some only have tea on their tables, maybe a good sign. Agile waiting staff dodge and weave between the tables. There’s another writer, busily scribbling on A4 sheets, leaning on a magazine, the author stopping every so often to consider the roadworks and the HGVs lurching awkwardly into sideroads to avoid them.

My tea arrives in a lovely big round mug, with the bag steeping nicely and a spoon on the side, plus a very generous jug of oat milk. There’s no tag on the bag, but the brew looks rich and promising. I’m not blown away, but the tea is warm and satisfying, and the cup is delightful to hold.

It’s a lovely place to sit, and a pleasant place to work – it looks like quite a few locals have clocked that. There’s also a luscious looking menu as well as the cakes, and the lunch crowd are starting to trickle in. I might pop back later on, with my laptop. 

Graveney & Meadow tea – twenty out of ten for tea

Graveney & Meadow hasn’t been open for long this morning, but it already seems to have woken up. It’s dark inside, and it isn’t brightened by the retro décor or the fairy lights that hang from the ceiling. People are wheeling in buggies with toddlers trotting along beside them or wide-eyed babies, goggling at new surroundings, clutched on one hip. Snatches of squeeze box drift out of the corner where the buggies are lined up, drawing commentary. Toddler requests for lunch are declined, but plates stacked high with muffins and hash browns, with fluffy parmesan on top, are making me hungry too.

The bar man explains that he needs to take some food to people, so he’ll bring my tea over. I don’t mind waiting – my chair is really comfortable. Actually, all the chairs here look like they’d be good for extended sitting. It’s a nice change from the move-on-quickly-please hard chairs in so many places. The tea arrives shortly afterwards, neatly laid out on a tray. The cup is nice and thick, the oat milk is slightly frothy, and the teapot is of the metal, Tardis variety1 – so what looks like a one-cup serving should comfortably yield two full cups, hopefully without scalding the hands. 

Some excellent tea

It’s bag tea, without an identifying tag. I’ve left it to brew for a while, so when I pour it out – successfully, it’s not a true Tardis pot – it’s nice and thick. It’s a solid brew, with plenty of body, richly malty and slightly astringent. And it’s perfect. Twenty out of ten. I bet that’s why all the parents are here – it takes a brew of that stature to get the show on the road again after an exhausting morning of fielding toddlers.

I can just about hear gently ambient music above clattering cutlery and bubbling conversation, then the squeeze box kicks in again, this time with singing, plus the bar man banging coffee out of the machine’s filter. A doddering toddler keeps wandering to the main door and trying to push it. It’s too heavy to give access to the street, but nearly all the clientele look up every time there’s an attempt, just to make sure. 

Watching all this, I’ve managed to spill tea down my second favourite scarf. Although it makes me fit in nicely with most of the other people here, I’m going to head home and sort it out. Back for more twenty-out-of-ten tea soon. 

  1. Ben Elton’s The Man From Auntie, at 2:32, though it’s really worth watching the whole thing – it has aged very well. ↩︎

Costa Coffee, Balham

Traffic grinds along; clattering busses and groaning motorbikes. The first schoolkids have started to walk past, some neat in new uniforms and some with saggy blazers and untucked shirts. There’s a general increase in pedestrian traffic, all wandering past the tables not quite lined up outside the coffee shop. It’s in a big street in a relatively wealthy area, yet has the transitory feel of a mainline station on a Sunday evening, when the trains are sparse or cancelled. The raggedy outside of the café, with its tumbleweed litter and scrolling loners, contrasts to the bright and neat interior with its chatty staff.

A lady with neon pink hair and double denim wanders up to me. ‘Have you got another pound?’ she asks.

‘Sorry,’ I say.

‘I’ll have to have some water before I go,’ she continues, patting her stomach. ‘I might go to the bank tomorrow. I’ve seen some leggings that I like.’

I smile, I have no idea what to say. Eventually, I settle on ‘I hope that goes okay’. She turns round and heads into the café.

A couple sit next to me, plonking down one espresso between them, then quickly evaporate. Children congregate in huddles at the bus stop and smaller knots outside the supermarket, emerging with plastic-wrapped snacks. The mint tea I ordered is now thoroughly steeped, and is destined to be more so since our conversationalist has now been replaced by an over-friendly wasp, whose attentions continue for some considerable

(wasp)

The tea is served as a bag in a tall glass mug with a fiddly handle accompanied by a pot of hot water that looks small, but makes a few cups. If this were at home, a co-habitee might make remarks about creating unnecessary washing up or

(wasp)

It’s particularly interested in my handbag, though there’s no sugar and it’s

(wasp)

The tea is kind of indeterminate. It has a mint flavour, but it’s like the mint flavour that comes with toothpaste or chewing gum, a sort of breath freshener and cooler rather than something that involves food or drink. There’s a lot of it, which is fine by me, but eventually the air starts to get chilly. The kids have long gone home, the fellow scrollers have moved on and even the wasp has packed up for the day, so I’m off too.

Breakfast tea(s) on Wimbledon Common

The early morning outside Wimbledon Tearooms is like the early morning on a campsite: general drowsiness, carping birds and a sharp retort of fresh air. ‘It’s nice,’ says the lady at the next table, contemplating a brownie, ‘But not Richmond Park nice’. Two teenagers slouch at the table next to her and the three discuss the virtues of cakes like red velvet, carrot and lemon drizzle.

Like me, most of the people here look as if they’re still waking up, but the dogs are straining on their leads, enthusiastic about everything. A border collie watches, tongue out, as food and drink is distributed to a toddler, and a spaniel makes a break for freedom, nearly towing its owner under a table.

There are lots of paper cups with various fillings, and the odd frankly magnificent-looking white bread sandwich with glorious, artery-hardening contents. The muted morning conversation is interrupted every so often by staff announcing the production of the next order to a pacing herd of people eager for caffeine.

Having already jolted myself semi-awake with a bucket of neat black coffee, mine today is a peppermint tea. The bag is having a thorough soak. I’m feeling dreadful after my second covid jab and, on no medical evidence, have a blind faith in peppermint tea’s ability to calm things down. The tea is both warm and menthol-cool, but it lacks caffeine kick a person needs at this time of day.

Runners slouch past. A man is patiently explaining to two little people that we start the day with Shreddies, not chips. There are protests, then a little voice starts repeating ‘Here comes the train’ and down each spoonful goes.

Having finished the peppermint tea, I order an English Breakfast tea. Waiting for it with the pacers, I admire the dogs. One large brown and white specimen gazes adoringly at a distracted-looking owner – or maybe at the extra sausage the owner has just collected. A Labrador patiently fiddles with its lead while its ears are fondled during a particularly gripping conversation. Something bashful hides between two table occupants, shaking slightly and looking out at other dogs. Something curly haired and defiant stands on a table still as a statue, ignored by guzzling owners.

My tea has ‘soya’ written on the lid in neat blue biro. The brand on the tag is ‘Birchall’, which I’ve never heard of, but there’s one of those ‘Great Taste’ badges. It makes a nice, thick, malty brew, but sits in the mid range, lacking discernible bass or treble. The soya’s good, not breaking up or too rich. It’s a decent sized cup, not insanely tall, though large enough to thoroughly recharge the batteries. But I think the complete experience requires one of those white bread artery hardeners. And maybe a dog.