# Coffee Island (UK) - Covent Garden



## RazorliteX (Mar 2, 2014)

More on the edge of Covent Garden but what a find. Ordered a flat white under house blend espresso - dark tasting flat white with a hint of plum (sweet and not the normal sour taste).

They also have a range of coffees you can take away - I was that impressed by the espresso blend I ordered 400g for around 10 quid. Easily to replicate the taste 18.5/36g 40 seconds (7 seconds starts to pour).

You can have coffees served from standard machine espressos to halogen lamp pour overs. The hot chocolate (according to my better half) was out of this world -I took a taste and it was that rich spicy chocolate taste - not your bog standard sweet sugary stuff. Nice.

Couple of pictures

  _DSF4625_FlatWhite by Mark Barnes, on Flickr

  _DSF4627_CoffeeBeansSign by Mark Barnes, on Flickr

  _DSF4585_CoffeeVendingMachines1 by Mark Barnes, on Flickr

  _DSF4594_CoffeeVendingMachines2 by Mark Barnes, on Flickr

  _DSF4606_CoffeeStaff by Mark Barnes, on Flickr

  _DSF4632_Coffeeshots1 by Mark Barnes, on Flickr


----------



## ashcroc (Oct 28, 2016)

RazorliteX said:


> More on the edge of Covent Garden but what a find. Ordered a flat white under house blend espresso - dark tasting flat white with a hint of plum (sweet and not the normal sour taste).
> 
> They also have a range of coffees you can take away - I was that impressed by the espresso blend I ordered 400g for around 10 quid. Easily to replicate the taste 18.5/36g 40 seconds (7 seconds starts to pour).
> 
> ...


Is that top cup hot choc or meringue?


----------



## RazorliteX (Mar 2, 2014)

ashcroc said:


> Is that top cup hot choc or meringue?


Haha - you know how it works. You ask for the signature and they put a big dollop of whipped cream on top. Did taste nice though, very spicy - not your normal 50 teaspoons of sugar HC rubbish.


----------



## nonickch (Mar 27, 2017)

Ha! It's the good ole Greek invasion trick.

Wooden horse, wildly popular coffee chain, same thing.

These are all over the place in Greece. They are usually your best bet for a decent coffee, and my no1 go-to place. But I'm not that enamored by them. 9/10 coffee shops in London that were hinting at specialty coffee were better in my opinion.

Unless the beans are different (they look the same, even the containers), they don't have any acidity. My current assumption is that they're very darkly roasted since the greeks promptly freak out when you mention acidity and coffee. Something something, coffee must be extremely strong, dark, bitter or it's no good. I mean, look at frappe, it's a heart attack in a cup.

Ask for a 'freddo espresso' to check out how the greeks are drinking their coffee these days. Be warned, it's a cold drink.

Their equipment is top notch for greek standards (double EK43's for pourovers and grind-for-home, E30 or Mythos for espresso). The unidentifiable grinder behind the EK43 in the image is what everyone is using to grind greek/turkish coffee (very finely ground). I have absolutely no idea who produces those.


----------



## RazorliteX (Mar 2, 2014)

Yeah they had a bunch of EK43s for customer vending if buying beans ground and K30s (CI branded) when dispensing brews to customers.

It was actually a really impressive setup covering every brew method possible. If this is the future for chain coffee shops I'm all for it









I did note some light roasts but I'm not overly partial to that taste profile.


----------

