Prufrock Coffee – an update

I’ve been waiting eagerly for Prufrock Coffee on Leather Lane to launch proper ever since I tasted my first cup from their outfit at Present in Shoreditch but it appears they’re taking the softly, softly approach.  My plan had been to wait until they were properly set up but ,quite frankly, excitement got the better of me and I couldn’t wait any longer. When Gwilym Davies – the man behind the operation – told me they’d be open on Saturday and that he would be there himself, I needed no further prompting to toddle along. 

I’m greeted with a very unnasuming shopfront – so unnasuming I walked past it a couple of times – with no branding, but a funky floating coffee pot display in the window. Inside is a beautiful calm, airy space, all wooden floorboards and white walls, well lit from the large windows at the front of the shop, it seems amazingly spacious and uncluttered with a patch of chairs towards the back and a coffee bar and counter in the centre. I’m sure some of this will change as they settle in and I’ll leave it there until I visit properly and spend a bit more time here, but for now the atmosphere is casual, laid back and comfortable.

I order my usual, a long black, and as I’m enjoying that perfectly poured full flavour I spy a guy I recognise as Gwilym and introduce myself.  The shop is not busy, it being fairly late on a Saturday afternoon and I’m pleased that he takes the time to chat to me about his project.  He explains that although not really full ready to open the shop it seemed silly not to serve the queue of coffee hungry punters  at the door. The additional work and decorating has now become an evening assignment, this is still very much a work in progress.

As we chat I’m in awe of a barista pouring a rosetta with ease and flourish, but Gwilym cassually dismisses this with a gesture to suggest ‘oh that old hat?’ he is of course an old hand and expert himself, and explains that his mission is to wean the masses off americanos - he gestures towards the great espresso machine, and onto drinking coffee that they actually taste, appreciate and enjoy. When the Australians brought the flat white to London, it really raised the bar for coffee over here, but that has now become the benchmark, and Gwilym thinks it’s time to move on and provide something new and exciting again. Here he motions to a bar with a definate Japanese aesthetic, set up with a row of syphon filters and he tells me there is only one other cafe serving this type of coffee so far in London (can you guess where I’m going to try next??). The plan here is to offer a variety of different coffees brewed in a way that best suits their character, and it sounds like a natural progression really; for those beans that are sold as single origin to be served in such a way that allows them to be tasted properly and in a way that enhances their natural attributes.

He demonstrates the process for me and I’m captivated with the theatre of it, those beams glowing through the glass, coffee bubbling away, I can just as easily picture him stood there in a white coat at a lab counter as I can at a bar creating coffee alchemy. I find myself again marvelling at his attention to detail; weights and measurements have to be just so and he tells me he likes the coffee mound to be just the right sort of shape and I guess it’s this fanatical absorbtion of his art that won him his barista title but also means he happens to create a superb brew. When it comes to tasting I’m blown away by the difference in flavour to the hot espresso I have in my other hand, for syphon brews are not scorching but merely warm. It does feel odd at first but the flavour is so pronounced, not dulled by the heat, I comment that it tastes ‘lively’, Gwilym says ‘fruity’ but the difference is clear and I find myself caught up in his enthusiasm and wanting to learn more. Lucky then that Prufrock will be running classes in the space downstairs on all sorts of things coffee related, I’m keen to get my name down on one of the more casual groups as my inferior coffee knowledge has been fanned and desire to learn is growing…

I’m really taken with the obvious parallel between coffee and chocolate, and the way in which the focus on both at the moment is at the source of the product, the bean, and the differing flavour characteristics of those single origins. He tells me he’d like to put a hot chocolate on the menu and asks me a couple of questions about bean to bar producers, you get the feeling that if chocolate is going on the menu then it’s going to be the BEST chocolate around, this man simply doesn’t do things by halves ( how exciting would it be if they were to offer a single origin coffee with a single origin chocolate truffle to complement??? -sorry, I’m getting far too carried away here!). In the same way there isn’t much in the way of food available at the moment, only a couple of nibbly things, the focus being entirely, and quite rightly on the coffee.

I’m pretty sure this is going to be somewhere I’ll adore as the phrase that reverberates through our talk is ‘made with love’ that illusive and magical element things have when they’ve been created ‘with love’, that little something that so often dissapears when things are made on a larger scale. And it is clear in abundence that every detail here is done with such passion and such love that I can’t see it being anything other than brilliant. I can’t wait to return when the place is in full swing and intrigued to see what I’m offered as a whole package, although I kind of get the impression that Gwilym likes the slightly underground/word of mouth feeling he has created here, and that it might retain an ongoing, ever evolving, work in progress sort of fundemental. But for the moment at least you can be guaranteed an awesome cup of coffee!