London
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3 Bateman St
London W1D 4AG
Opened by the same people behind Flat White, Milk Bar is serving up quality coffee antipodean style.
13 reviews
4 reviews 3 reviews
2 reviews 2 reviews 13 reviews 4 reviews 2 reviews 2 reviews 3 reviews
June 22, 2009
Love the place, the coffee, the art, the music and the staff! xxx
Whoever has enuff time to write a novel of complaints is truely a very sad individual!
June 22, 2009
If not one of the best coffee shops around surely the best flat white in the city if you are craving that coffee fix from downunder. Staff are friendly and energetic. I will admit, prices are up and the sandwich portions seem to have gotten smaller with the changing times. But the decor, aroma, flavours and location remind me of some of the back alleys of Surry Hills or Pyrmont on Sydney Harbour. Totally worth it for a proper flat white. MC
June 05, 2009
I work right around the corner from this joint, and occasionally venture in there when I get bored of the regular coffee outlets, just to see if things might have improved. Whilst the place itself is a good hangout, run by trendy chiselled looking staff, as far as the coffee goes I always leave disappointed.
For a start, its insanely expensive. I just paid £2.70 for a so called "large" cappuccino (so, normal size then..). £2.70 is a lot. I mean, you can get lunch for that. So I'm thinking, this is going to be up there in the great pantheon of cappuccinos right? The best you've ever tasted? Wrong...
First of all, I'm made to wait at least 5 mins before someone takes my order (while an idle member of staff seems happy to just sit and drink his own coffee as if to taunt me!). There is achingly hip music playing, even at this early hour of 9:30, but played at a volume which makes communicating with the staff a significant challenge.
They ask me if I want sugar. Now, even if I did - which incidentally would be ridiculous as coffee is a bitter drink and if you want a sweet coffee you would clearly go staright to Starbucks to order some foam topped monstrousity - surely sugar is something the customer would add themselves to suit their taste? Anyway, after another 5 minutes the unholy cup appears, I part with my £2.70, and land at my desk to take the first sip..
They have sugared my coffee. Worse still the coffee is only 'tepid'. It tastes like some kind of ghastly beverage you would buy from a motorway service station and drink from a polythene cup, and for this, my drinking pleasure, I have wasted 10 minutes of my life (not to mention another 10 writing this review). And £2 frickin '70!
Come on guys, sort this out!! Its time to cut the hipster nonsense and get back to basics - turn the music down, acknowledge the customer, take the order correctly, set a fair price, deliver the drink HOT and inside 90 seconds. These are all the things that places like Pret get right and that's why people go back again and again even though they are an unfashionable 'big company'.
Here endeth the lesson...
January 14, 2009
Coffee aside, that young lady who cooks the best scrambled eggs in London deserves an MBE. The youthfulness of the patrons who frequent here turns me into an old wart.
January 12, 2009
i love it...
sensational coffee, unfortunately nothing like the ol korova milk bar...
Im not a coffee snob but i think the flat white was class A standard.
I cant really put my finger on it, but it almost has a studenty kind of character. kind of canadian back country kind of chilloutness. kind of oldschoolish kind of trendy kind of radical.
anyway 10% of the price goes to charity... isnt that nice?
October 24, 2008
There is so much great coffee in Soho now, and my cup of choice would have to be Milk bar, the sister site of Flat White, and in my opinion miles better.
It has a much calmer vibe here, and staff are genuinely friendly. They are currently serving up Square Mile Coffee on a gorgeous jet black FB70 Marzocco, and the coffee is really sensational, I'm yet to have a bad cup. It is pricey however, for my small soya cap I'm paying £3 - yep quality costs though so I'm happy to hand it over. Plus the 50p (!) charge for soya seems fair they use the 'bonsoy' which I think is some kind of Japanese brand and I'm guessing it costs them upto £2 a carton anyway.
Fits about 20 inside I'd guess, but there is stools outside for the smokers too. I'm yet to try anything besides the coffee there but it all looks pretty tasty, and I've spotted a jar of vegemite so I'm guessing the coffee isn't the only antipodean offering.
