The Writer's Café guide to Café Species

by Harriet Smart, January 23rd 2004

Never mind theories of story, it's time for a theory of café. Here are some of the categories I've identified so far.

1. The cafés that time forgot

Here formica reigns. And those daglow fancy cardboard shapes with the prices written on them are stuck all over the wall. Nothing fancy. No frills. The place for a fry-up and a big mug of tea. Sometimes these evolve into bastions of trendiness by their very failure to be cool.

2. Unreconstructed tea shop

Royal memorabilia and/or bad art work. Polyester lace tablecloths. The door will have a jangly bell. Can be run by quite scary women or alternatively rosy-cheeked matrons who make the best cup of tea you have ever had. You can't really tell until you are right in there and there is no way to walk out without embarrassment if you find it is TOO LATE.

3. National Trust Tea Rooms

I am a loyal National Trust member but I think they have lost the plot in the tea rooms. Historic food with recipes culled from local collections seemed like a great idea I am sure, but really the novelty doesn't actually deliver what the consumer wants. You used to get the cream of British baking - with local volunteers supplying the goods. Now there are strange medieval stews and Victorian cakes that are less than appetising. These remarks apply only to the National Trust for England and Wales. Scotland seems to be doing fine in this respect. And just in case you think I am carping unduly, the cream teas are still spot-on and their pots of tea are always delicious.

4. Latte palaces

Baristas in tight black t-shirts, marble, chrome. An enormous steaming espresso machine and huge mugs topped with heavenly pillows of foam. It's beginning to be a common sight in every high street, and although people might complain about the standardization, the product is good and in places where there was only a greasy spoon before, it must seem like a blessing.

5. Wholefood vegan cafés

These arose like a plague in the mid seventies and are not so common now. They were the place to go if you wanted to sit on a very rickety second hand chair and drink herbal tea and eat quite with wholemeal pastry that tasted more like damp mortar. Sometimes they can be wonderful, like Hendersons in Hanover Street but they should be approached with extreme caution.

6. Bars pretending to be cafés

My pet peeve. These occupy far too much space in high streets and are frankly intimidating to a modest retiring punter like me. But they glitter enticingly, you approach and you discover it's just another branch of Pitcher and Piano or whatever, and they are more interested in flogging pints of overstrong lager in vases than coffee and ambience. Give me Costa, Nero or Starbucks anyday. I must mention one café bar that gets the caffeine/alcohol balance right - the tiny and bohemian bolthole that is the wonderful Bossa in Granby Street, Leicester.

7. Department store coffee shops

As I was growing up in 1960s Birmingham (not Alabama), the big posh department store Rackhams - in a fit of modernity - installed a cafeteria called the Gay Tray. It was very exciting and the trays were indeed very gay - bold florals were key, and all the food was displayed behind little glass doors with chrome knobs. How thrilling to grab a plastic dish of fruit and jelly, put it on your tray and shuffle along towards the the cash desk, sliding your tray along the bars. The other place to eat at Rackhams was the Lilac Room where they served Fork Luncheons - it was extremely formal. No doubt in the fifties, you could have worn a hat at lunch and no-one would have looked twice. Actually I rather miss that - department store restaurants used to have a pleasant stuffiness which is almost impossible to find these days. Cavendish House in Cheltenham served proper afternoon teas, with cucumber sandwiches and starched napkins. Jenners in Edinburgh must have had a great tea room at some time but I arrived too late to experience it.

In some department stores, the coffee shop can seem like an ante room to the Underworld and a resort for the undead.

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