8 Market Pl, Hitchin SG5 1DR
Hitchin is a town with a fair few decent indie coffee shops that cater for the discerning drinking, alongside a few of the big chains as well. As such, a business marketing itself outside of the coffee realms really shouldn’t be able to compete against other coffee auteurs, and yet Chia is an equal match for anyone in the caffeine stakes.
Ostensibly a vegan cafe, Chia started out as a tiny vegan cake and coffee shop and moved into larger premises, expanding its vision along with it and now pushes plant based living through food and drink. However, its organic coffee is well worth chirping about on its own accord as their own blend (medium roast Guatemalan beans) holds sway as a good cup of joe. Of course, dairy-free alternative milks are the only option for those who don’t want it black but the blend lends itself to coconut milk, undoubtedly deliberately tailored to its means. There was, however, a specific take on specialist coffee that really caught my eye and, ever the one to try new things, I couldn’t help myself but try it out.

In the 1840s, people like Charles Baudelaire, Honoré de Balzac, Alexandre Dumas and Victor Hugo would gather at Paris’s famed Club des Haschins and chug mugs of strong, black coffee mixed with marijuana to start their day. 
In the mid noughties, a hipster craze fuelled by the legalisation of cannabis in certain states of America saw the re-invention of the bulletproof coffee that would involve coffee, butter and cannabis and was marketed for its supposed ability to aid focus and attention in the drinker. Now, whilst THC (the active ingredient in cannabis that gets you high) remains illegal in Britain, its close cousin, CBD, has recently been legalised. This substance imparts a mild feeling of relaxation and calm (as well as pain relief in certain cases) without the same psychoactive effects of THC. As such many health and wellness business have seized upon it. Chia is no exception to this and offers the CBD butter coffee, a latte made with coconut butter, CBD oil and coffee. 
At first sip, the flavour is not what your average coffee drinker would expect with the CBD having quite a large bearing on it. This means you’ll get a mouthful of something quite light and grassy, almost floral in its tones, as the coffee actually takes a backseat in the tasting notes yet is still undeniably there. The mention of ‘butter’ would suggest something quite heavy and creamy but that’s not what you get with the coconut butter actually contributing to the frothiness of it all rather than anything else.
For those that like their coffee to taste like coffee, this is not going to be their first choice but things like this do add another string to the bow of the specialty coffee market and are bound to take off more so in the future. As for Chia, if you like chic, sleek, plant-based food and drink, this is the place to be.

6 Bull Plain, Hertford SG14 1DT
Hertford is hardly a town crying out for coffee shops. Most of the major chains are there as well as a healthy handful of independents too, and if it weren’t for an ongoing redevelopment project in the town centre right now that had forced some businesses out during construction work, then there would undoubtedly be more. It is somewhere to go if you ever need a coffee or a haircut, much else though and you may be in trouble (hence the redevelopment).
I was actually trained in one of these independents and for years always considered it the best coffee spot in the town due to it being the only one that had any sort of proper approach to the third wave coffee movement but that time passed with the arrival of The Hertford Coffee Lab. An offshoot of The Hitchin Coffee Lab, it was almost an overnight success, such was the desire for proper coffee expertise in the commuter town that serves as the homestead of many London workers and middle class, middle management types and their hipster offspring that think they know a thing or two about coffee, and the Lab filled that void down to a tee.
The distressed, up-cycled school desks, graffiti style art on the walls and excessive use of plant life almost fits the hipster coffee shop stereotype perfectly but it is not all image that has made it the place to be in the otherwise ailing and nondescript town. The Coffee Lab roasts its own blends with its large, fully functional roaster sitting in the corner as you sip your cappuccino. On some days you may even be privy to the roasting process but most really just attend for the fact they do things well and have an atmosphere as welcoming to small children and dogs, as it is to bearded millennials and business suits. 
It offers up all varieties of milk, including dairy alternatives, alongside an array of cakes and snacks with the odd vegan option sometimes available (although not consistently). The fact that this place could be comfortably supplanted into a more metropolitan area like London, Brighton or Bristol says a lot about the work that has been done to make it such a roaring success and it seems a little odd to find it in the middle of the county town of Hertfordshire, although I’m sure the coffee aficionados of the area are grateful that it is there.