Brew Garden, Hertford

www.brewgarden.co.uk

3 MAIDENHEAD STREET, HERTFORD, SG14 1DP

Appearing just before the festive season, The Brew Garden seemingly stole in out of nowhere and just set up overnight. Perhaps a little miserly, right across the street from much loved local establishment Hertford Coffee Lab, but business is business and a little competition certainly isn’t going to hurt the Herts coffee scene. 

With an A-board proclaiming the ‘Best Espresso in London’ from The Times, I’m instantly dubious. Do you know how much good coffee there is in London? And, I’ve never heard of the Brew Garden before it rocked up in my little commuter town that is rapidly becoming an enclave of hairdressers, estate agents, coffee shops and little else more. However, I’m also not one to turn their nose up at more speciality coffee being on my doorstep.


A tiny premises, its selling point seems to be that it is a coffee bar during the day and wine bar at night, the sort of establishment I would have been crying out for when I was a drinker but now I’m just non-plussed at another hospitality business trying to stake a claim on an ailing high street. But, making a big to do of speciality coffee and craft beer, I give it its due and make a mental note to drop in some time and, sure enough, the opportunity presents itself on a week day working from home where I’ve had to stroll into town for some such necessity and thought, why not stop off here rather than my regular caffeine dealer?

There’s not a lot of room but the rounded glass frontage and al fresco tables (abandoned at the moment given the place is covered in snow and ice) certainly offer up a view to pleasant drinking. I wipe the condensation from my glasses and peer bleary eyed at the pastries on the front counter but then I see it: a glorious Elektra Belle Époque. One of the classic style Italian espresso machines that is all chrome and rounded like a bullet, a spread eagle bonnet ornament adorning it like some sort of Roman flagstaff. A vertically developed machine, it has a retro feel that evokes a sort of 1950s charm whilst actually being fairly up to date with coffee technologies. I love the look of them but I have a certain scepticism of places that use them just because, all too often, they become signifiers of style over substance. A sort of café equivalent of the hipster or the middle aged cyclists that so often frequent them, all the gear and no idea.

What is delightful is that, with each coffee comes a 70% cocoa slab of chocolate. Very Italian in its service and delightfully snaffled into a coat pocket for later consumption as I order an oat latte to take away. Traditional Italian coffee should mean I’m served a bitter espresso and a glass of water and flatly refused anything with milk (or in my case, milk alternative) after 11.30 am but this is middle-class, middle England and so I’m served up my oat latte from the steaming, monolithic bell jar of an espresso machine without a word issued against me, and I cheerily venture back out into the cold again.

Of the coffee itself, a mild experience with a hint of lingering bitterness but nothing too striking to say it really stands out from the crowd as pure, authentic Italian coffee. But then, I imagine most Brits would struggle with that and perhaps it has had to been altered to appeal to native tastes. Either way, a nice little addition to the swelling coffee scene of the town. I must try it again some time and perhaps, just perhaps, that need to return could well shake up the established hierarchy of Hertford town.