Something’s missing

Unlike my Dad whose philosophy when travelling is to never visit the same place twice, I take great comfort in the familiar. Even when I'm visiting somewhere new for a few days I quite like to at least get my coffee from the same place.

Here in Oxford my love of the familiar is easily satisfied. You see there is only one café that serves coffee which is a pleasure to drink. I love to drink coffee. Truly love it.

But, like anyone with taste buds, I can distinguish between a cup of steaming smooth deliciousness and a cup of boiling bitter fetidness. For me there is only joy in the former. In the UK, for reasons I cannot completely grasp, 97 per cent of the coffee available falls firmly into the latter category*.

I practically gave up on coffee entirely when we arrived in England. It was so foul, it was not worth trying. That was until a dear Australian friend made a thrilling discovery. An unassuming café directly opposite her college caught her eye.

The first sign its coffee was at least worth trying, was that it offered flat whites. These now feature on several coffee-chain menus here but back then it was extremely rare. A sign it was perhaps a purveyor of fine, drinkable caffeine.

So we arranged to meet and, joy of joys, we discovered their coffee was smooth, delicious and absolutely worth a trip into town. My love was born. I frequent it so often I am practically a fixture. Anyone who has visited me in this iconic town will have sampled its wares.

When I arrange to meet friends we never include a venue in our texts. It's a given that if we're meeting, we're meeting there. This may seem a little dull but it's actually terribly easy.

It's in the heart of town, it's always full and it's an extremely rare day when I don't bump into someone I know there. On the days I don't, there's always a conversation being had by someone which is absolutely worth eavesdropping on. (One particularly memorable conversation was a pair of Oxford undergraduate girls discussing their peer who had turned her body to less salubrious, more lucrative, lines of work to fund her university lifestyle.)

Now it's not without its faults. Curiously the staff are not overtly welcoming. They're almost always polite, they smile, they know my order and on some days they stop for a chat. But they're not overly warm, gregarious types. A particularly low point was when a new staff member got very aggressive and nearly poured two coffees on me and my uncle. Apparently we didn't take them off his hands fast enough. That was a bad experience.

But I tolerate these things. The coffee warrants it.

I share this to help you understand my current predicament. In the twenty months I've lived here its popularity has grown exponentially. It is a busy busy place. And, it's with great difficulty that I admit the coffee is now suffering. Badly.

Sometimes it tastes burnt, sometimes it's cold and sometimes it just doesn't melt in my mouth. A cup of drinking pleasure is no longer a fait accompli.

And this is my dilemma. Accept the lesser drink or have a quiet word with the terrifying barista. What would you recommend? God knows there's no where else to get my coffee.

*There are some notable exceptions in London including The Providores, Lantana and Monmouth