Wednesday 5 January 2011

Elephant House & Café Nero



Let's be honest with our readers: our only real basis for judging coffee shops is whether they have b) wireless c) plugs d) mild-to-bad cheap coffee. Of course, this depends on another prerequisite: a) chairs.

The elephant house didn't today. At least, not in the window seat, which is the nicest in the house. Given as the line was 5 deep, and the 'who's next please' was hidden among the chatter of the 30-something yuppie and tourist clientele, Simon and I deemed today not fortuitous for an elpahantine cup of coffee. Their student discount is fairly good, however, if I recall correctly. I once spent a summer here, reading a book on oceanography for a book I haven't yet written, until I flirted too much with one of the baristas. But that's another story.

Café Nero, next to Blackwells (and attached to it), also failed on the chair front. The tables are unattractively lined in two long rows in the middle, one long row on the wall, leaving around three options for those of us who'd rather not share a surface with anyone else. Of those three individual tables, one was free, with no plugs. Maybe next time.

As for now, I'm writing this in Black Medicine, my favourite chain in Edinburgh. But more on that later.

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