Though initially the idea of going to coffee chains wasn't really in the plan, a very very cold and crisp evening in Oxford made us rush into Coffee Republic yesterday. And since it is not good to be prejudiced against anything, I thought of going ahead and doing a review of what I learnt from this place as well. As is the plan I had my mocha (to be a fair judge etc.) this time with whipped cream on top of it. Punit had an iced mocha (yes even I was surprised, especially since we took shelter in this place to avoid the freezing temperatures outside!). We sat by the window and relished our mochas as we stared into the busy and bustling with youth Oxford city.
The coffee was good, but somehow very similar to the one you get in Starbucks, or Costa,. Keeping my biases against chains and franchisees aside, I seriously could not really tell any uniqueness in this mocha, although there was nothing wrong with it. It wasn't watery, but it wasn't creamy as well. It was not bad but it was not that great either. The ambiance was again very neutral, nothing really special about that. The only striking difference from private cafes was the amount space it had for itself. It was much more spacious than the last two cafes that we had visited.
And because some my readers (and by that I mean 1 out of the 2 current readers I have!) suggested that I need to put in more pictures and videos to improve the readability of this blog, here is the view of the table top marketing idea from tabletopmedia in this cafe.
Sell Coffee, not your soul
So as promised, we visited the second coffee bar on our list. This is the Nude Espresso close to Liverpool Street, London. The name I must say was quite intriguing, and hence the curiosity was more. But unfortunately the coffee experience in Nude wasn't as heavenly as it was in Flat White. I took the same Cafe mocha, so as to be a fair judge of quality, and this one was no where near as creamy as the one I had in Flat White. This time Punit took Macchiato, and he did mention that his was quite full bodied, which I take was a good thing. Apart from coffee, I also took a toasted pesto sandwich, which was quite tasty, but then again, nothing to die for. All in all to be completely honest Nude was a bit of a let down, especially because it's quite some distance from where I live as well. It's a good thing that we also clubbed our Spitalfield market and Upmarket survey with this same trip.
Observations:
- Extremely busy, again hardly a place to sit and relax or even chit chat
- Not really spacious but slightly bigger than Flat White
- Personally the quality of coffee I had was not out of the world
- Ambiance was not that great
- It's run by a NZealanders, and possibly one of the plus points of this place was that he was quite cute and had a cool accent.
-Sell Coffee, not your soul
