The Store House, Hertford

https://www.thestorehousehertford.com
8 Parliament Square
Hertford SG14 1EY
When browsing in amongst the cured hams, swanky bottles of oil, posh crisps and array of artisanal products predominantly sourced from British farms, you’d expect to be hard pressed to find anything with satanic branding and a gleeful, anarchic nod to metal music and just general chaos. But, look up from the counter filled with quiche and cheese, above the head of the person potentially serving you in The Store House and you’ll spot the unmistakable pitch black boxes of Dark Arts Coffee, all lined up neatly in a row waiting for unsuspecting yummy mummies or vegan hipsters that happen to run their own coffee blog to order an oat latte.
Whilst the branding may be at odds with the location of a redbrick building that sits on the square where boujee boutique restaurants pretend it’s warm enough to dine al fresco in a town where ‘socialism’ is a dirty word, it goes to show that quality travels and Dark Arts has nailed that despite it’s ‘edgy’ marketing serving it better to being sold in jewellery shops in Shoreditch that stock moulded silver skull rings or scuzzy record stores that somehow still manage to survive by selling ‘zines and bootleg CDs in the 2020s. 
The Store House itself has limited space with a coffee/wine bar taking up most of it so bored office workers can neck a glass of wine at lunch or slam an espresso before getting on with their day so I take my, slightly over frothed and under extracted, coffee to go. This is to be expected though, from somewhere just open a few weeks.  Hertford is a town with plenty of places to get coffee but limited offerings of a decent brew so to watch how this one develops will be a genuine pleasure and hopefully something that will be around for quite some time yet.