I had a request on the blog last night for coffee houses in Brighton, particularly places where people could go and arrange kaffeklatsches that they don’t have to charge for. Quite how that is saving people money I don’t know, because the attendees will need to buy their own coffee, and that won’t be far off £5, but I guess it makes a point.

Anyway, Brighton with crawling with coffee houses. If you are an American and can’t do without Starbucks then they have them. UK people might suggest that you try Costa Coffee or Caffè Nero instead. I won’t get into religious wars over coffee chains (unless Gloria Jeans in involved, in which case we are talking real religion, but they are not in the UK, thank goodness).

There are also many independent coffee houses, and the occasional local chain. Small Batch, for example, is an interesting little company. And of course hotels, bars, pubs and so on will serve coffee.

The trouble is that this is often English coffee. Did you think that there can’t be anything worse than American coffee? Oh my sweet goddess, you have not died and gone to hell unless you have experienced English coffee.

Anyway, this all led to a lengthy discussion on Twitter involving Lavie Tidhar who, coming from a Mediterranean country, is serious about his coffee. I have been to Zagreb. I have some inkling of what he means. There is a list of the better coffee shops in Brighton here. The one I am going to recommend is this one. That’s partly because the owners are from Melbourne, partly because of the name — Mr. Wolfe — which means we have to take Gary there, and partly because Lavie took a look at their website and was just about polite about them. There’s a recommendation.