Hot Numbers, Cambridge

4 Trumpington St, Cambridge CB2 1QA
For all the pomp and ceremony of being a famed seat of learning, Cambridge does not have a coffee scene that is widely lauded, which seems a little odd given that there’s plenty of students pulling all nighters and in desperate need of a decent caffeine fix to spring up plenty of fine coffee shops. But without a pre-eminent roastery in mind, I turn to the Lonely Planet Global Coffee Tour book to see if it can provide me with any suggestions. It furnished me with a single morsel in the form of Hot Numbers a business specialising in single origin coffee and with two locations in the city, it’s flagship being at a former brewery on Gwydir Street.
I slither through the Royal Botanic Gardens to the smaller store on Trumpington Street where stripped wooden tables and bare brick wall would suggest the congruity of any hip little indie cafe but to deny its own identity would wholly unfair.
Able to select the size of your coffee from either 8oz or 12oz, this is an interesting shift away from the stringent level of purism that runs through the third wave coffee industry in sizing where one drink is one size, and although between 8 - 12oz is a perfectly acceptable margin for, say, a latte, it is very rare that you, the customer, get the choice. What this clever little inversion of the coffee size paradigm also does is combat the nonsense found in chain coffee shops where you can get a ‘large’ flat white, this rendering the drink no longer a flat white. It offers a choice that so many consumers want whilst also maintaining some properness in coffee ordering.
Food and drink are sourced from Cambridge and the Cambridgeshire region in order to support local business, and have a lesser impact on the environment whilst, as is rapidly becoming the standard, non-dairy milk options are in abundance. It’s definitely worth making the time to stop off here if you can, but be warned that it’s clearly popular with locals and tourists alike.
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