Peter's own borough - 101

It has taken me a while to get to this post. I have been going through a sinusoidal wave of high and low and before I could put one thought down, it virtually evaporated into a feeling which was exactly opposite of the first one. Making it very hard indeed to put something coherent down.

Anyways, I had previously promised to bring you a few glimpses of Peter's own borough and today I am finally ready to share these local stories with you.

November last year, while searching for ingredients for our first house warming, we came across this Turkish place called Bodrum. This little cafe+take-away joint is situated on Lincoln Road, a road which has a lot of diverse food places. ( I have tried the Afghan place called Kabul, which I absolutely love, and have the Polish, Portuguese, Lithuanian restaurant next on my list of places to try).

But coming back to Bodrum, we really liked this little place. We reached there all tired and exhausted, and were instantly rejuvenated by their warm smiles and service. The best part about this place is that they serve Lahmachun (thin crispy Turkish Pizza) which is one of my favourite. They also serve you Turkish tea for free with your food. And to top it all the prices are very reasonable.

Unfortunately although Lincoln Road has a lot of potential, I don't think it is marketed very well. Even the look and feel of the road is not really maintained. As such not many people seem to want to go there. In general the attitude of people in this city is to order take away and so there are loads of take-away options. But some of these take away joints are actually good or at least quite different places to visit as well. And I would recommend giving it a shot once in a while!

My hunt for cafes got interrupted since December owing to my whirlwind tour across India, and then coming back and rejoining work. The last few weeks have been frantic at work, and the weekends were pretty much spent recuperating.

But there is this place that I pass by every day while walking to and from work, and their inviting black board which reads 'Homemade soup and Cheese scones for £2.75' always made me want to go in and take a look. The problem is that I walk so fast, that I had never really looked in properly, because if I had, I would have gone back to it sooner than waiting until yesterday.

But yesterday morning, the first thing that I wanted to do when I woke up was to walk down to this place. It is called MD's Coffee and is situated on New Road very close to the Market way. The cafe has a Mediterranean feel to it, and has a variety of sandwiches and breakfast options to choose from. They also do Turkish coffee, bubble tea, Iced chai, Matcha tea, fresh orange or carrot juice and a good cappuccino as well.

I stuck to my initial reason to go in, and had the soup of the day with bread filled with Feta cheese (they had run out of scones). The food was good and filling. And the ambience inside the coffee shop is quite nice as well. There are plenty of scarves, lamps, embroidered cushion covers etc. on sale which to me looked like have been brought over from Turkey perhaps.
It is a nice place to catch up with a friend on a winter morning or perhaps to slow down for a few minutes on the way to work.

Speaking of my walk to work, that in itself is a separate story to tell one day. But for now I will leave you all with my 'current' nomination of one-stop Peterborough:

Sunday Roast                       - Fox and Hounds, Longthorpe
Catching up with girlfriend    - The Boathouse
First Pub of a night out          - Charters
Last Pub of a night out          - North Street Bar
Comfort food                         - Kabul (Afghan place)
Junk food cravings                - Pizza Santino


Have a wonderful Sunday!

Sell Coffee, not your soul

Fresh coffee, old memories and new starts

It is one thing to remember the past fondly, and quite another to be stuck in it. And I do have a habit of the latter. 

I remember, when I finished school, I didn't think I could live without my best friends. But when I left home town to study engineering in another city, I met new people and made my next set of best friends. I was sure I would lose them when we finished college. And for a while I did. And for that period I was heart broken. 

But I was yet to be introduced to some more people, who would play a big role in my life, especially to make me feel at home in a foreign country. For a good part of the next three years these new people became my family in the UK. Needless to say, when the time came for each of us to part ways, it was not easy. 

And then the other day (just happened to be the day when Indian media celebrates friendship day), while I was sitting in a cafe in Soho (Flat White), with yet another set of friends, who I have grown quite close to in recent times, I could not help being a bit overwhelmed by a warm fuzzy feeling. 

And all those friends, who I left behind at many different crossroads of my life, I realised I haven't really lost them. I may not see most of them over long periods, or speak to them even, but the strong invisible connection with them never goes away. When I meet them after years, time seems to automatically rewind and the cracks start filling up quite quickly.

All of them (including those who will become one of them in future) enrich my life constantly. I may not pick up the phone and tell you all this in fact it is very unlikely I will ever say a single mushy sentence to your face - but you know me, and you know how I feel.

And speaking of friends of the future, I have recently started an endeavour with a couple of my new found friends. Each of us love to write but needed a bit of motivation to do so more often. 

For a while I had stopped publishing my fictional works to the public domain, but have decided to post the new ones here. All three of us have a very different writing style, and I am hoping that will make it more interesting for the readers. Go take a look here, if you are interested and let us know what you think.

And with that, I shall get out of my cave (bed) and give Sunday a chance :) See you all soon.

Sell Coffee, not your soul

A short trip

A a lot has been happening in the last few weeks. But the one thing that has definitely not been happening is writing. I have been pushing most of my thoughts to the background and hoping that the time will come when I simply have to put a pen to paper and get it all out of me.

I spent the first three months of this year craving wide blue open skies, and then finally my wish was granted. Against all odds, we managed a short trip to the US and Mexico. Met up with friends, tried loads of new and tasty food, soaked in some Caribbean sun and sea, attempted conversing in massively broken and limited Spanish language, had a glimpse of a civilization I had no idea about, 'cooked' ourselves completely in the 35 Deg hot sun while paying our respect to one of the seven wonders of the world and of course tried out a few new cafes.

I have moved quite a bit as a child. But every new place that I have moved to, there have been people, who I instantly connected with and eventually we became friends. These people are partly responsible for transforming a new unknown world to something close to a home for me. And as such a lot of our journeys one way or the other revolve around catching up with these friends who we love and miss. And this trip was no different in that aspect. We spent a few days in Austin, doing the old style catching up, lazing around and just being ourselves. 

One afternoon we found ourselves chilling in Mozart, a cafe by the lake, well known among the students who greatly contribute in giving this place a feel of a college canteen.

Considering the warm weather, I ended up taking an Iced Mochaccino, which I do recommend if you ever visit Austin!

Speaking of coffee, one of the most remarkable and dramatic coffee that I tried during this trip was on our very last night in Playa Del Carmen, Mexico. This was the Cafe Maya (of the Mayan civilization) at the Yaxche resturant. I had read some rave reviews about this coffee, and I just had to taste it. Cafe Maya turned out to be far more than just a coffee!

It started with our waiter turning into a magician and appearing with a table full of instruments and ingredients to create this experience for us. The ritual he then performed in front of us, with alcohol, sugar, fire and blue flames left us speechless. We could not help clapping like children at the end of the show.

It's not easy to capture such moment's in one frame. Especially when you don't want to take your eyes off what is going on. 

The end product was quite unique as well, but as I said, this was not about the coffee, but really about the experience. The drama, the excitement and the thrill was what made it special. 

In fact, if you think about it, it's a bit like our lives. Sometimes I feel like we all have the same destination, but the path to getting there is what makes all the difference. It is up to us what we make of our journey. Some of us can take the a simple experience of sipping a hot drink and transform it into a magical experience for a few minutes.

Sell Coffee, not your soul

why coffee?

Why coffee, as many of my friends who I have been discussing the idea with keep asking me. So finally I decided to make a list of reasons as to 'why coffee?'

• Because coffee sells like hot cake
• Coffee sells with or without hot cakes as well :)
• It wakes you up
• It's what we need at the start of a day, middle of the day, or even post dinner
• It's climate-proof (sells hot as well as cold)
• It's age proof (caters to all age group with different taste in food)
• It's affordable (even the most expensive coffee is affordable)
• It's a good excuse for a first date
• It's a good bonding idea for friends and family to meet up over once in a while
• It's a great hangout idea...A cafe is a place where 'F-R-I-E-N-D-S' meet everyday :)
• I have seen trends of most artistic and passionate people having lots of coffee while they are creating something or thinking
• Coffee and art are for some weird reason deeply co-related

 The reasons above are more commercial, apart from these there are a few personal reasons as well, but for right now I am stopping at this much





Sell Coffee, not your soul

Nude Espresso

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

Flat white

So yesterday we were out in the freezing weather with a single purpose in mind. (Actually that is not entirely true, since Sushi Hiro occupied half our mind space for the first 2 hours of our outing, but then again, sushi is no coffee and so will not go into that story here). Anyways after our sushi craving was put to rest, we decided to start with our visits to London Cafes in search of the right coffee, right environment...or our 'market research' you could say. After walking for a few minutes in the snow, we finally found the first one on our list, 'Flat White', a cafe in Soho.

Facts:

• Flat white is run by a NZ guy, or someone from 'down under' as they say it. 
• They sell coffee, cakes, muffins, salads, sandwiches and such other snack
• Located on Berwick St, Soho, London
• Relatively small cafe

Observations:

• Get their coffee beans from Square Mile coffee roasters
• Extremely busy, even though not all other cafes in the area were full
• Not a place to sit and relax, or think
• Great tasting coffee and hot chocolate
  
• Served in glasses or cups, no real rule which one for what
• Decor and furniture - basic
• Promote art mainly from Australian and NZ artists
  
• Service was not the greatest, in fact I  even suspect the guys sitting next to us was served our order, who didn't even pay for it and just quietly left once they had finished. Ofcourse we eventually got what we ordered, but the waitress was a bit confused.

Inferences:

• Central London cafes are small busy places and may be difficult to open a slightly bigger space with a workshop.
• If the coffee tastes good, people do not even care much about the environment (we still need to see if the vice versa is true)
  

-Sell Coffee, not your soul

New bean on the block

We are at a stage where 'Spread your beans' is only an idea and a whole lot of impending hardwork and research. Through this blog we would like to make a progress report of sorts of how things are shaping up at our end. (And how soon we can invite you all over for a hot cup of refreshing coffee). We hope that this blog will be our white board of thoughts, ideas and learnings through out this journey of becoming the 'SYB'. There are only two things we care about at present, one is the Coffee and the other is You.
Any kind of feedback, questions, ideas, criticism, friendly opinions, relevant remarks and even irrelevant gossips are most welcome!



Sell Coffee, not your soul