Little Chan : Workshop Coffee Co

Friday 27 April 2012

Workshop Coffee Co

One of my side jobs at the moment is being a food writer for an online magazine. My contributions to date have been resto reviews; that is, until my editor came to visit me at work and suggested that I write a piece on top cafes in the capital, all within Zone 1. I pitched the idea that we could do a list of 5 cafes but rather than a top 5, list them as being the best of a particular category (newcomer, food, cake, established, connoisseur). Of course, this meant doing a bit of field research and my first port of call was Workshop Coffee Co in Clerkenwell.

Workshop Coffee Co used to be called St Ali (after a famous cafe in Melbourne and until recently, had ties with the cafe in London) and is renowned for serving great coffee and yummy food to match. I had the pleasure of meeting Tim (director of operations) to chat about the cafe and the food they serve over a flat white. The ethos of Workshop is very much trying to use the best ingredients where possible (coffee and food alike) and then treating these ingredients with respect (roasting the coffee properly, cooking food simply) and serving this to the customer in a relaxed environment. Our conversation not only covered what was going on at Workshop but what was happening with the London food scene at the mo - very enjoyable! Had it not been for a prior engagement, we could've been chatting for hours longer! Tim was particularly proud of the burger on the Workshop menu; sadly, the kitchen wasn't open when I was there so I wasn't able to try it.

The burger, however, stuck in my head; so much so, that JD and I returned later on to try it out. The burger is usually served on the 1st floor restaurant but that was fully booked so we sat down on the ground floor and they were more than happy to serve us burgers there. The deets: 250g patty (bigger than most) and using rare breed Dexter beef - very, very good and well worth the trip out East :)