Drink, Shop and Do. We drank, anyway.

I thought I should update you with a quick post to follow on from our Azeri experience. After going to gorge ourselves on Azeri cuisine we thought it only proper to go and get some coffee, because falling asleep at lunchtime is just not the done thing. We went down the road to an establishment called “Drink, Shop and Do” (www.drinkshopanddo.com, 9 Caledonian Road, London, N1 9DX, tel: 020 7278 4335). I say establishment because it really is thoroughly modern in a hipster sort of way and thus rather hard to say exactly what kind of establishment it is. You wander in through what looks like a gift shop (with an adult section downstairs, just to add to the curious post-modernity of the place) and into an airy section with an arched glass roof in the back, where you find a bar/café sort of affair. Apparently it used to be a public bath house, which must have been a long time ago, because I don’t remember it and I grew up near there. It looks something like a cross between a bar, a coffee shop and a charity shop, which we were told is because you can in fact buy everything in there, even the cup you’re drinking from. It was certainly novel.

Here it is, from the deceptively small looking exterior.

We ordered a macchiato each, which was a bit pricey at £2.80; it also took quite a while. However, they were extremely good coffees and worth the wait and money, I believe they get all their coffee from a small supplier somewhere in London, clearly contributing to the excellent quality of the caffeinated delight we were served. I remember attending a short introduction to particulars of coffee at a university event once, where a specialist informed us that the way to tell a really good cup of coffee is that it has a certain sweetness even when you don’t add sugar. Well, that’s exactly what I found with this cup, it was special, and I drink a fair amount if coffee.

 The charity shop-cum-coffee shop-cum-cocktail bar interior.

I had a little scan of the menu and they had some really interesting cocktails ranging from £6.50 for the cheapest one, to a slightly frightening £9.50 for the most expensive one (maybe I’ve just been living in a ridiculously cheap country for too long). There were classics like Hot Toddies and more interesting ones like Christmas in Manhattan, a mixture of Buffalo Trace bourbon, mulled berries, Evan Williams Cherry Reserve and orange bitters. I always like it when I find drinks that have things I’ve never heard of in, I hope one day when I’m feeling flush I can return and sample some of these Dionysian delights. For those of you who are of a similarly curious bent, Evan Williams is a brand of bourbon and I think this particular one is a cherry liqueur version. One more interesting thing about this place: they do nights for over 18s in the evenings, things like classic dance music and indie nights, and craft activities of various sorts in the daytime, which I think are free. So, really a pretty conceptually modern place, if expressing modernity through mashing up lots of familiar concepts. Interesting stuff, a bit Hoxton yah perhaps, but interesting nevertheless and definitely worth a try.

  

 Evan William Cherry Reserve, sweet and strong no doubt.